It appears that a Sparc 10 can easily handle 64 users doing FreePort things. NCF machines currently handle 100 or more users, although painfully. Two conflicting predictions are made:
The pressure will then be between making the new (much more friendly) software faster, and making the fast software friendlier. Any reductionin the price of MIPS will tend to favour the more complicated software, while finances will tend to favour buying machines 2x the speed in order to handle 4x the users with the old software.
It will be assumed that the net result of this is that the machines won't be able to handle more than 64 users. i.e. any improvements in price/performance will be eaten up by more complicated software.