Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!daveb
From: daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: What to do with all those MIPS
Summary: Use them for connectivity.
Keywords: transaction processing, mips, minis
Message-ID: <2639@geac.UUCP>
Date: 23 Apr 88 17:49:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: geac.2639
Posted: Sat Apr 23 13:49:47 1988
References: <3b8a861f.44e6@apollo.uucp> <8804191303.AA24772@bu-cs.bu.edu>
Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Organization: I'm not gonna tell ya.
Lines: 46

In article <8804191303.AA24772@bu-cs.bu.edu> bzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
| Ah, my favorite subject...
| 
| I've been talking for a year or so with vendors like Encore who are
| threatening (?) to deliver "minis" in the range of 1000MIPs or more in
| the near future (12..24 months.) I suspect this might breathe new
| interest into a currently rather boring mini market. One interesting
| question also is what will some of the folks who build mainframes do
| when all this happens (although they retain a big lead in disk i/o
| performance some of that will surely falter also.) I mean, really,
| deliver 10,000MIPS in the same time frame?

  Well, I can see a move away from big, bare, specially-configured
mainframes for TP (Transaction processing) and toward physically
smaller, more powerfull machines with more-or-less ordinary
operating systems instead of TP monitors.  Of course, the company I
work for noticed that a **number** of years ago [1], so I'm not
saying anything new.

  A portion of the market needs a medium or large machine, able to
run a few hundred terminals, with a reasonably large and fast set of
disks, so that they can service businesses which are physically
centralized (eg, all the departments of a large library), but may
have relationships with other, distant, businesses (eg, bank
branches dealing with AMs and clearinghouses).  At the low end,
they can use machines much like current workstations with a couple
of extra, rather dumb, terminals attached.  At the high end, they're
still having to buy machines like the Honeywell DPS-8 (GCOS)
machine. From experience, I'd say that the high-mips minis could get
into the market if they had enough intelligence in inexpensive
front-end processors or front-end machines.

 --dave (and if they buy IBM, they get to regret it) c-b
[1] Geac is a Canadian manufacturer of transaction-processing
    machines, mostly in the library and financial markets. The two
    lines (8000 & 9000) both run fairly normal-looking operating
    systems, and are about as far from CICS and even TPS-8 as you
    can get. Why, we even write operating system code in high-level
    languages and applications in purpose-built ones.  (The
    preceding has been a paid political announcement of the
    we-hate-CICS association (:-))
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor yunexus utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind) 
 CANADA, L3R 1B3 (416) 475-0525 x3279 |  every 6 months.