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When we used PCs for AI development in Lisp in the end 80s/early 90s, they were large Compaq PCs with disk, large screen, backup, graphics card, lots of RAM, Li

by lispm 8y ago

When we used PCs for AI development in Lisp in the end 80s/early 90s, they were large Compaq PCs with disk, large screen, backup, graphics card, lots of RAM, Lisp license etc. -> 25k$ or more. A Lisp Machine new in 1984 would be around 80k$. Prices were then coming down a bit for delivery systems and also for embedded boards. But you could think that end of 80s a large Lisp Workstation was three times as expensive as a high-end PC or Mac. But for PCs RAM was still expensive and the 32bit Intel processor wasn't really that good running Lisp. RISC systems (SPARC, MIPS, ALPHA, ...) were better at that and their Lisp systems were better than the ones for PCs. But the real good Lisp systems (Allegro CL, LispWorks, Lucid CL) for RISC appeared or matured only end 80s/early 90s. 64bit Intel is okay nowadays, too. Some Lisp systems were also stretching PC/Workstation capabilities, since they were large memory-hungry applications - they triggered specific bugs in larger configurations. Imagine in the early 90s a CAD system written in Lisp running in hundreds of MBs of RAM, where each CAD workplace cost 1-2 million... stuff like that used by FORD for example to design cars...

oblio 8y ago
With the cheapest one being 3x the cost of high-end PCs (so not the average PCs, which were and are the majority of PCs sold), the economics kind of say why Lisp Machine didn't fare that well. If I have to pay 3-5-10x of an already expensive PC for the average person, that thing'd better be life changing amazing.
- lispm 8y ago
  There were cheaper machines. But generally I would guess all in all it were 2 times the cost of a PC. Symbolics also sold a development environment for Windows (called CLOE) and Lisp Machines on boards for Macs and SUNs. TI had a board for Macs too, but TI left the market end 80s very quickly. Symbolics then was also developing a virtual Lisp Machine - an emulator running on 64bit DEC Alpha machines - the software did cost around $5k later. But keep in mind when PCs became viable for Lisp development on a comparable level, it was already end 80s. Something like a Mac IIx from end 88 was not faster and came with a 40MB Disk. I got a used Lisp Machine from 1986 which had a 600MB disk drive - the drive alone was more expensive than 2 Mac IIx machines. When research labs bought machines like such a Lisp Machine in 1982 for 100k$, they were basically ten years ahead of the market. When budget for these projects were shrinking and the competition was catching up (first RISC Unix workstations and then high-end PCs) it was already endgame time. Additionally companies moved some Lisp software away to C++ - because C++ applications were usually thought to use less system resources at application runtime.

by lispm 8y ago

oblio 8y ago

With the cheapest one being 3x the cost of high-end PCs (so not the average PCs, which were and are the majority of PCs sold), the economics kind of say why Lisp Machine didn't fare that well. If I have to pay 3-5-10x of an already expensive PC for the average person, that thing'd better be life changing amazing.

lispm 8y ago
There were cheaper machines. But generally I would guess all in all it were 2 times the cost of a PC. Symbolics also sold a development environment for Windows (called CLOE) and Lisp Machines on boards for Macs and SUNs. TI had a board for Macs too, but TI left the market end 80s very quickly. Symbolics then was also developing a virtual Lisp Machine - an emulator running on 64bit DEC Alpha machines - the software did cost around $5k later. But keep in mind when PCs became viable for Lisp development on a comparable level, it was already end 80s. Something like a Mac IIx from end 88 was not faster and came with a 40MB Disk. I got a used Lisp Machine from 1986 which had a 600MB disk drive - the drive alone was more expensive than 2 Mac IIx machines. When research labs bought machines like such a Lisp Machine in 1982 for 100k$, they were basically ten years ahead of the market. When budget for these projects were shrinking and the competition was catching up (first RISC Unix workstations and then high-end PCs) it was already endgame time. Additionally companies moved some Lisp software away to C++ - because C++ applications were usually thought to use less system resources at application runtime.