After much examination, it turns out that it has 4 50mhz processors with 2mb of cache each (SM51-2s), they are all SuperSPARC chips, which makes it a pretty decent machine. I intend to set it up purely out of general interest. I cannot afford big Sun machines that are new, so I guess the only thing I can learn on is older stuff. It has some really cool stuff, for instance, the entire machine is built as a rack, so you can drop in all sorts of things into it. On top of that, the power supply holds what looks like 16 SCSI harddrives, on top of the normal drives that mount below the processor module (where the 10 processor boards plug in). Unlike my Solbourne though, this machine is still usable (the Solbourne is another SPARC based minicomputer I have, it currently has 2 MicroSPARC processors and 208mb of memory, its a Sun clone, and the first line of SPARC-SMP systems made, but it runs a weird offshoot of SunOS 4 known as MP/OS), so I don't know what I will use it for. I could set it up with a network connection and use it to fool around with Solaris, but I don't think I have the money to run it 24/7. In regards to MATLAB, non-x86 systems often perform poorly on benches for a number of reasons, such as the lack of optimization for certain systems. In all honesty, wouldn't it be more fair to compare a 1ghz x86 system with a Blade 1000 class system? It seems to me that you are comparing Suns older stuff (that is now being phased out) with Intel/AMDs newer equipment.