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From: davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 Vs 32
Message-ID: <1339@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Mar-87 12:42:36 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.1339
Posted: Fri Mar 27 12:42:36 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Mar-87 11:03:38 EST
References: <3810013@nucsrl.UUCP> <28200016@ccvaxa>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 43

In article <1498@dg_rtp.UUCP> meissner@dg_rtp.UUCP (Michael Meissner) writes:
>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

You're missing the point. All of the objections you have made
have nothing to do with CPU power. Obviously any machine
handling a large number of tasks at once, and/or many users,
disk, etc, will have to have a wide bus and i/o processors. If
you take an IBM 3090 and make it handle all the interrupts
itself I suspect it would run about as fast as a 32 micro.

A number of manufacturers are addressing this problem, and I
believe more will do so as the market opens for super micros in
larger environments. Unfortunately these things add cost, so I
would expect a 30-60% increase in the actual box, but not the
peripherals.

A case in point is an AT running Xenix. It may have plenty of
power to handle 8 users, but it becomes a total pig when loaded.
Replace the cheap serial card with one which has a processor and
the system is now as responsive as a VAX 11/780 with 40 users.
If you hate the 80*86 chip, replace with your favorite, the
example still works, as see the Plexus line, which adds i/o
processors to it's larger machines, rather than using a faster
CPU.

-- 
bill davidsen			sixhub \
      ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz ->  crdos1!davidsen
				chinet /
ARPA: davidsen%crdos1.uucp@ge-crd.ARPA (or davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA)