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From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.large,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Killer Micro Question
Message-ID: <1990Nov14.154322.8894@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 90 15:43:22 GMT
References: <16364@s.ms.uky.edu> <3849@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 26

In article <3849@vela.acs.oakland.edu> tarcea@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Glenn Tarcea) writes:
>
>  I also find it interesting that IBM has decided to go with the clustering
>concept for their mainframes. Although it seems to me it would be a lot
>cheaper and better for the customer to buy 10 $30,000 workstations and
>cluster them together, rather than 3 $22,000,000 mainframes (run yeck! MVS)
>and cluster them together.

 Suppose you wanted a system to manage huge databases.  You needed strong
integrity controls for concurrent database updates.  You needed to access the
data in a huge room packed to the gills with disk drives.  You needed to be
able to access the same data from any CPU in the system.  You couldn't
tolerate the performance hit of the bottleneck caused by pumping all the data
down an ethernet.

 You just might find the mainframes a better solution than the workstations.

 IBM didn't get that big by ignoring its customers' needs and forcing them to
buy an excessively expensive and underperforming system.  Instead they carefully
monitored those needs, and evolved their hardware and software to meet them.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115.                                  +1-815-753-6940