Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!ucla-cs!mara!mickey.cognet.ucla.edu!kennel
From: kennel@mickey.cognet.ucla.edu (Matthew Kennel)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What is a Mainframe?
Message-ID: <78@mara.cognet.ucla.edu>
Date: 3 Jul 89 18:20:49 GMT
References: <125@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> <20752@winchester.mips.COM> <4400@ficc.uu.net> <187@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU> <355@torsqnt.UUCP> <33942@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@mara.cognet.ucla.edu
Reply-To: kennel@mickey.cognet.ucla.edu.UUCP (Matthew Kennel)
Followup-To: comp.misc
Distribution: comp.arch
Organization: none
Lines: 22

In article <33942@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
)
)[Heavy Metal does big I/O]
)
)Minis and micros are not as well defined but (good) minis often offer
)mainframe-like performance on a very small number of jobs, you can
)move a small group off the mainframe onto the mini without much loss
)of performance. The term "micro" generally refers to a certain type of
)packaging and manufacturing approach that minimizes costs firstly and
)might (these days) give near-mainframe performance on very simple,
)single-threaded applications.

This illustrates the obvious conclusion:

A supercomputer is a mainframe with an adequate CPU.

)	-Barry Shein
)Internet: bzs@skuld.std.com


Matt Kennel
kennel@cognet.ucla.edu