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From: meissner@dg_rtp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 Vs 32
Message-ID: <1498@dg_rtp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Mar-87 11:25:12 EST
Article-I.D.: dg_rtp.1498
Posted: Mon Mar 23 11:25:12 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Mar-87 02:05:44 EST
References: <3810013@nucsrl.UUCP> <28200016@ccvaxa> <1308@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <3436@iuvax.UUCP> <5954@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: meissner@dg_rtp.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Organization: Data General (Languages @ Research Triangle Park, NC.)
Lines: 29

In article <5954@amdahl.UUCP> chuck@amdahl.UUCP (Charles Simmons) writes:
> In article <3436@iuvax.UUCP> bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (Che' Flamingo) writes:
> >davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
> >>
> >>etc. The 68020 and 80386 have enough power to run large
> >>businesses, schools, city and county government, etc.
> 
> Kinda makes you wonder why the Fortune 500 spends on the order of
> $5,000,000 for an IBM mainframe or Amdahl mainframe when 68020
> based workstations can be had for on the order of $50,000.

While the 68020, 80386 (and whatever the latest 32*32 National makes) are
fine in their niches, they are not up to the task of running a moderately
large business.  Yes the address space is reasonable, but that is not all
that goes into making a computer.  Ever see a DASD disk farm?  (a disk farm
is a roomful of large disk drives, and possibly a larger room behind it of
cartridges, tapes, etc -- these things store massize amounts of data).  The
thing that the big guys specialize in is I/O -- with intelligent controllers
[channels] offloading the main CPU.  I seriously doubt a 68020 workstation
could put 100 or so 500M disk drives on it (or if you could, what the response
time would be).  Data General is a supermini maker, and the largest disk
configuration we support is on the order of 15 gigabytes (it may be higher or
lower, but that is a ballpark figure).  That is a small compared to the large
mainframes (it also costs near $1M just for the disks, not to mention the
processor needed to support those disks).
-- 
	Michael Meissner, Data General	Uucp: ...mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!meissner

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