Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!rminnich From: rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Extremely Fast Filesystems Message-ID: <30979@super.ORG> Date: 8 Aug 90 13:35:26 GMT References: <5539@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <13285@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <30728@super.ORG> <13667@cbmvax.commodore.com> Sender: news@super.ORG Reply-To: rminnich@super.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie, Md. Lines: 34 In article <13667@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup) writes: > I submit that your situation is something of an unusual case, and is >likely to remain unusual for at least a decade, perhaps 2. Few machines >(percentage-wise) even have 4 GB of storage, let alone files larger that 4GB >(I've never even seen a file larger than 100MB, even on mainframes). I couldn't disagree with you more. Now that storage is about $5K/gigabyte for Sun file servers (if you don't buy from Sun, that is) i would expect 4 Gb to be common. We have no Sun file servers here with < 4 Gb any more. I am using a demo Decstation 5000 right now with this little itty bitty box which contains a 1Gb disk. But that is a side issue. More important issue: suppose I find that there is a 6 Gb file at NCAR which shows a really neat ocean model. It is there, my workstation is here, so what do i do? Nowadays you do the easy thing: ftp it over the net. YYYYUUUUCCCCKKKK. No, wait, i forgot: buy plane tickets to Colorado. Now that is fun, but you have just left your entire environment behind in (my case) Bowie, Md. That is no good either: now i have to ftp my environment to Colorado! What I *want* to do is say: "when this program runs, please associate this 6Gb chunk of its address space with that file over there on NCAR". Problem solved. Only I don't have any architectures that will let me, because of architectural limitations. Well, maybe PA can do it, with its ability to address billions and billions of segments each of which can contain billions and billions of bytes. There are good reasons to have more than 32 bits *now*. ron -- 1987: We set standards, not Them. Your standard windowing system is NeUWS. 1989: We set standards, not Them. You can have X, but the UI is OpenLock. 1990: Why are you buying all those workstations from Them running Motif?