Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site intelca.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!amd70!intelca!kds
From: kds@intelca.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.research,net.cse
Subject: Re: should universities explore the cutting edge?
Message-ID: <240@intelca.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Mar-84 22:43:50 EST
Article-I.D.: intelca.240
Posted: Sun Mar 25 22:43:50 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 01:04:05 EST
References: <235@intelca.UUCP> <3595@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 58

Out of the frying pan...although one may think that I have lots of
built-in bias in this area, I think people maybe mistook my point
concerning this whole can of worms, so I will take one response and
try to clarify what I was saying, perhaps if people want to flame at
me *personally* they should do it using mail, rather than bothering
the entire net...

>if one were relating 16 and 32 bit micros to mainframe
>architecture I suggest a pairing something like: 68000 - S/360, 16032 -
>VAX, 8086 - DG Nova; and while the Nova solves a lot of peoples problems,

You missed the point, how many VAXes do you have that have <40M of secondary
storage?  How many micros are there that can handle 100 terminals.
What I was talking about was not the processor architecture per se,
but rather the system architecture.

>The problem with real cutting edge architecture like transputers,
>Illiac IVs, and (maybe) 432s is that the software technology is such
>that we can't use them (Occam perhaps to the contrary someday).  This

Precisely, if universities are supposed to "explore the cutting edge" then
it should be their charter to make these products useable, or even to
suggest and implement different, more novel architectures, and then
to make them usable.  But what are people suggesting now?  Go and buy
some more VAXes, for which the *hard* problems have been solved and
customize the things for the local environment.  Now this is fine
if people realize that what they are doing is buying a tool, maybe to
be used to teach people what a computer is or to explore other problems.
If this is the purpose of the computer, however, I would suggest that
you would do much better buying a pre-made environment with lots
of available support.  Users are going to get very frustrated if they
try to use a development system in a production environment!

>This means that we (particularly in academia) must not view IBM-PCs
>and other architectural dinosaurs as other than interim solutions or

It is my feeling that *any* computer is an interim solution, all the
more reason to get one that comes up with the least amount of effort
or grief.  Also, if you look at most modern computers as complex
instruction set computers, and are really in to RISC as the trend
of the future, then one could say that 8086s, 68000s, 16000s, Z80000s
etc, are all architectural dinosaurs.

Anyway, lest we forget, most people, including University Computing
centers, view computers as tools to solve problems, not as works
of art, subject to interpretation as to their beauty.  If that is
what you want to do with computers, great, but don't try to impose
that kind of incomplete, unsupported environment on *users*  If
you want to develop an environment, you have a lot of work and
documentation to do, so you better get started right now, and not waste
so much time reading the net (using code, most probably, written
somewhere else on an operating system written somewhere else on a
computer you bought as a package (for a lot of money, lest we forget,
letting someone else solve our problems costs a lot of money)).
toodles.....................
-- 
Ken Shoemaker, Intel, Santa Clara, Ca.
{pur-ee,hplabs,ucbvax!amd70,ogcvax!omsvax}!intelca!kds