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From: pjg@acsu.Buffalo.EDU (Paul Graham)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Single user vs. shared (was Re:
Message-ID: <19662@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 20 Mar 90 23:12:00 GMT
References: <52817@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <76700181@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
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gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:


|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?

the same reason people who do data entry all day get their own terminal.

|(2) X-windows is nowhere near the be-all and end-all of interactive
|    supercomputing

perhaps, but that doesn't mean that a nice terminal with a nice channel to
a room full of mips isn't a good way to go (rob pike makes this argument
better than i do).

|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?

|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.

nice "systems", as opposed to the killer micro that drives them, are not
"cheap" just yet (but getting better every day).  what i'd like to see is
a nice mechanism that lets the x terminal find an idle workstation and
attach to it while giving some notice to users who are selecting from
a pool of workstations that that workstation is now not idle.  we have
"labs" with workstations and x terminals.  people have (or soon will have)
better access to x terminals (for various reasons) but all the xterminal
users jump on the same backend while workstations stand idle.

it may be the case that the big step needs to be in the communication
channel.  i can buy a 10 MIP cpu for my multi for 2K.  an x terminal for
1.5k (a bit more for a NeWs terminal).  my multi should soon have 128-256MB
of memory and in excess of 600MB of swap.  i'm loathe to build a facility
full of workstations so configured.  of course i work at a university, so
maybe it's just a matter of budgets. (i've recently made a similar case but
including software expense in comp.unix.questions)

sorry this doesn't have much to do with computer architecture.