RFO (request for opinions)

[LOLL at BIOVAX.UCHICAGO.EDU]

Fellow xtallographers:
	I'm an old VMS person who is confronting the
obvious necessity of switching over to Unix.  It seems
clear to me that,graphics-wise, the way to go is SGI,
an Indigo**2 Extreme or something like that.  The question
is, what about pure number-crunching?  I.e., FFT's, 
the normal sorts of data processing, MIR calculations,
and simulated annealing that xtallography labs perform.  Are 
there machines that are clear winners, given the normal
sorts of academic budgetary constraints--RS-6000's,
Alpha's, SGI Challenges?  If one is setting up a lab 
de novo, are there significant advantages to sticking
to a single vendor for graphics boxes and number-crunchers
(the single vendor being, in this case, Silicon Graphics)?
Any opinions are welcome (and don't be afraid of under-
estimating my knowledge of RISC-based architectures: in 
the unlikely event that you do, I won't be offended.)
	Thanks in advance.

Pat Loll
Univ. of Chicago
loll at biovax.uchicago.edu