Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Single user vs. shared (was Re: Message-ID: <76700181@p.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 20 Mar 90 17:31:33 GMT References: <52817@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Lines: 47 Nf-ID: #R:lll-winken.LLNL.GOV:52817:p.cs.uiuc.edu:76700181:000:2080 Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies Mar 19 11:46:00 1990 Eugene Brooks writes: > The analogy people use here is comparing their car to their personal > computer. The price tags are even comparable in this case. The > argument does not hold water. The car can't be switched between > users in milliseconds. The computer is an entirely different animal. > You CAN have exclusive access to a CPU in a suitably parallel resource > composed of Killer Micros, yet efficiently share it with others. Let me point out that -- (1) The price of a killer micro CPU is not much more than a decent commercial electronic typewriter. And most secretaries get their own typewriter... gee, I wonder why? (2) X-windows is nowhere near the be-all and end-all of interactive supercomputing I like this argument a lot: > Written 8:35 pm Mar 17, 1990 by shj@ultra.com in comp.arch > If someone measured the time that I spend using the stapler, tape > dispenser, or pocket calculator that I have in my office, they'd > find that each sits idle 99.9...% of the time. Does this mean that > I shouldn't have exclusive use of these items, and I should have to > go to some central facility whenever I want to staple, tape, or > calculate? The high cost of computing in the middle of this century has done everyone a great psychological disservice. Killer micros of today are a lot like flourescent lights -- cheap to operate, prevalent, and expensive to turn off. To see a machine standing idle, when you were raised as a child to "use cycles efficiently" is a gut-wrenching experience. Just remember Alan Kay's prediction: In the future, computers will come in cereal boxes and we will throw them away. Aluminum was once valued as ten times more valuable than gold. Now we use aluminum cans daily and discard (recycle) them without a second thought. It looks like computer CPU's, even uniprocessor supercomputer CPU's, will go the way of aluminum cans. Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies