Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!linus!philabs!ttidca!hollombe
From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: What's the future of the mainframe?
Message-ID: <2077@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 11 Mar 88 20:51:58 GMT
References: <8803052348.AA21708@bu-cs.bu.edu> <3614@killer.UUCP>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath)
Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica
Lines: 25

In article <3614@killer.UUCP> elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes:
> ... Frankly, I don't see why anybody would buy an IBM
>3090, unless they needed access to absolutely huge databases that exceed the
>size of most minicomputer disk packs (e.g. the 1 gigabyte supereagles).

I happened to meet the manager of Northrup Corporation's supercomputer
resources at a party a few months ago.  She told me they use a 3090 as the
front-end processor for their Cray (and it can barely keep up).

Most super-minis these days have the same 4 gigabyte virtual address space
as the mainframes.  The main difference seems to be in the raw processing
power (mips) that can be brought to bear on a single process, as opposed
to multiple users. 600 Suns are fine for 600 users with relatively modest
DP requirements, but if you need to get the payroll for 300,000 employees
printed out tonight, because payday's tomorrow, you'd better have a machine
that can run that one program in the time available.

Of course, a hypercube parallel processor could probably do the job as fast
as you could feed it the data, but that's another discussion.

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@TTI.COM)   Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI                                           Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (213) 452-9191, x2483
Santa Monica, CA  90405 {csun|philabs|psivax|trwrb}!ttidca!hollombe