Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!amdahl!sbf10 From: sbf10@uts.amdahl.com (Samuel Fuller) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: What is a mainframe? Message-ID: Date: 30 Jun 89 02:37:17 GMT References: <27709@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <34038@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Reply-To: sbf10@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Samuel Fuller) Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 26 In article <34038@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > >>What is a mainframe? It's an OBSOLETE COMPUTER! >> >> >>brooks@maddog.llnl.gov, brooks@maddog.uucp >There of course exists that relatively small group of customers with >massive hunger like the American Expresses, Master Cards and JC >Penneys of the world who can still swallow these machines in one gulp. >So, I'd agree that mainframes are mostly obsolete for all but perhaps >the fortune 500 companies who really do need to quickly manage on the >order of hundreds of gigabytes of data in a timely matter. > I find it hard to believe that a 50 Billion plus dollar-per-year business can be considered obsolete or even mostly obsolete. The mainframe segment of the computer market continues to grow and will probably be around for a lot longer than most of the posters to this newsgroup would like to believe. What is a mainframe? It's a commercial/business supercomputer. Sam Fuller / Amdahl System Performance Architecture My Opinions.