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From: swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Commodore Research and Development.
Message-ID: <1991Jan09.153108.17485@convex.com>
Date: 9 Jan 91 15:31:08 GMT
References: <41220@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <187e4f65.ARN097c@easy.hiam>
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In article <187e4f65.ARN097c@easy.hiam> lron@easy.hiam writes:
>In article <41220@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, Marc Barrett writes:
>
>>    As for IBM, the mainframe market is totally dominated by IBM, precisely
>                                                 ^^^^^^^^^
>                            Really, that's why they laid off all those
>                            personel that were on the production line
>                            for the 3090, give me a break IBM has been
>                            loosing ground in the mainframe market for
>                            quite a while.  Why would a company buy an
>                            IBM mainframe when they can get a machine
>                            that's compatible with the IBM machine but
>                            faster, cost less and backed buy a well
>                            established company???

IBM makes most of their income from mainframes.  And that income is awesome.
The fact that they have been loosing ground does not mean that they do not
dominate in that market.  Everyone in that market is loosing ground.  The
reason is the proliferation of all these hyperactive scalar engines.

I don't intend to get into an architectural discussion here; I am aware that
mainframe performance incorporates much more than pure scalar performance.
However, many tasks that have traditionally been performed on mainframes
are now being offloaded to smaller machines.  Other tasks continue to
require the peculiar capabilities of a full-fledged mainframe.  But people
are finding that much of their work can be performed on cheaper machines.
Networking is driving this changover at an accelerating pace.

This was the nightmare that IBM was concerned about when they originally
came out with the IBM PC.  They had an alternate machine that was not
inherently crippled in the ways that the PC ultimately was crippled.  But
to produce a machine that could efficiently offload many tasks from their
mainframes of that time would have been, in their eyes, financial suicide.

IBM has always been capable of producing a really nice PC; they just haven't
been willing.  When the SPARC came out IBM responded with the RS6000.  Now
they are their own worst competitor.  Their troubles are probably not at an
end.
--
            _.
--Steve   ._||__      DISCLAIMER: All opinions are my own.
  Warren   v\ *|     ----------------------------------------------
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