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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!pyrnj!mirror!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 Vs 32
Message-ID: <731@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Mar-87 14:13:40 EST
Article-I.D.: xanth.731
Posted: Tue Mar 24 14:13:40 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Mar-87 03:58:42 EST
References: <3810013@nucsrl.UUCP> <28200016@ccvaxa>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Distribution: world
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 53
Keywords: digital videodisk, tertiary storage
Summary: Cheap secondary (tertiary?) storage is near

In article <1498@dg_rtp.UUCP> meissner@dg_rtp.UUCP (Michael Meissner) writes:
[ lots of recursive excerpting omitted ]
>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. [ ... ]  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).
>	Michael Meissner, Data General	Uucp: ...mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!meissner

I'm not sure it is fair to blame the processors here.  At least the IBM (tm)
architectures put a processor per i/o channel.  68000's are easily cheap
enough now to do that.

More important, if mass RAM or hard disk is used as a staging device type
secondary memory, and most of the data stored is on tertiary memory, LP sized
video disks, last I looked, could store 12 Gbytes per side, within a factor
of 4 of your whole disk farm.  Rewriteable video disks are working in the lab
(Sony says) and expected out (if I remember right) within 15 months or so.
Consumer grade read-only video disk drives are being shown now at shows with
prices in the $5000 range, within reach of the well to do computer hobbiest.

Thus it is not unreasonable to expect a 68020 or equivalent based system,
with, say, 100 Mbyte of hard disk and 50 Gbyte of video disk to be available
for home use in two or three years, for less than the price of a good new car.
This would be the equivalent of most governmental bodies computing resources
of 5 years ago.  Such a system could probably be put together now for about
for times the price (per delivered unit in quantity) as a government funded
R&D effort.

The (to me) unrealistic part of your retort was in assuming that the disk farm
has long to live.  My impression is that it is being rapidly overtaken by new
technology, and will soon be superseded by something with a much lower
cost-to-maintain.  The online, staged, tertiary storage concept has been proved
by several hardware releases with corresponding operating system functionality;
IBM's cartridge tape system comes to mind at once, and BBN's terabyte memory
was another attempt in this direction.  Then again, we may see fast access
digital video disk someday soon.

For the real data hogs, RCA or Phillips, I forget which, was working on a 100
video disk "jukebox" for defense data storage back in the late 1970's.  I
don't know what became of it, but with a times 4 density increase from current
best, that would be 5 Tbytes in the space of a large disk drive.  Yum.  ;-)
--
Kent Paul Dolan, "The Contradictor", 25 years as a programmer, CS MS Student
at ODU, Norfolk, Virginia, to find out how I was supposed to be doing this
stuff all these years.  3D dynamic motion graphics a specialty.  Work wanted.

Unemployment is soooo nice though...I never have to disclaim anything!

UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!kent
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559
Wisdom:  "Peace in mankind's lifetime.  Why leave a whole universe unexplored?"