doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (03/06/85)
> what interests me in the next ten to 15 years of computing is: > 1) as micros approach mainframes in speed, what's ibm going to do? are > they going to enter the supercomputer market by necessity? are ibm's > somewhat stagnate views of computing going to affect the rest of the market > with pc/370 ideas? IBM in the supercomputer market? Not very likely. IBM's strength is in Business with a capital "B". They've failed pretty miserably in past attempts to expand into other markets. About 15 years ago they made a super number-cruncher called the 360/91. They sold 4 of 'em. A few years back they came out with a "home computer", the 16K IBM PC, which had BASIC in ROM and a cassette port. Remember that? Nobody bought it. Instead, businesses bought the PC with dual disk drives, and then Winchesters. So IBM made another run at the "home computer" market with the PC-jr. They didn't sell many of those until they made it capable of running business applications like Lotus 1-2-3. -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS]) (03/10/85)
In article <426@terak.UUCP> doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes: >> what interests me in the next ten to 15 years of computing is: >> 1) as micros approach mainframes in speed, what's ibm going to do? are >> they going to enter the supercomputer market by necessity? are ibm's >> somewhat stagnate views of computing going to affect the rest of the market >> with pc/370 ideas? > >IBM in the supercomputer market? Not very likely. IBM's strength is >in Business with a capital "B". They've failed pretty miserably in >past attempts to expand into other markets. About 15 years ago they >made a super number-cruncher called the 360/91. They sold 4 of 'em. yes, but no-one else sold any either and IBM wasn't seriously in there to sell more. according to informed rumor, the Sierra processors have changed the structure of the floating point hardware to significantly decrease the average processing time of the instructions, not that this is going to have cray worried or anything. until IBM decides it is profitable to do so, it will stay out of the supercomputer business. IBM will never go into the supercomputer market out of neccesity because it is they, more than anyone else, who control the direction and rate of progress of the microcomputer market. only when ALL OTHER manufacturers decide on something and move in that direction will IBM be forced to do anything. history has shown that this is not likely to happen and things will pretty much continue the way it has. when IBM decides it's time to make a supercomputer to challenge cray's, they will dominate the market in less than five years. whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. >A few years back they came out with a "home computer", the 16K IBM PC, >which had BASIC in ROM and a cassette port. Remember that? Nobody >bought it. Instead, businesses bought the PC with dual disk drives, >and then Winchesters. So IBM made another run at the "home computer" >market with the PC-jr. They didn't sell many of those until they made >it capable of running business applications like Lotus 1-2-3. >-- >Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug just as any company, IBM has done some pretty stupid things. what counts is that there are enough good things being done and marketed successfully to make up for it. all this talk about powerful microcomputers replacing mainframes is just talk until i/o devices of the speed and capacity of current mainframe peripherals is available at prices that the average consumer can afford. i have been using a microVAX for a bit (running Ultrix) and my number one gripe about it is that any disk i/o and my programs grind to a halt. if raw CPU power was all there was to IBM's, a lot of other people would have a dominant position in the mainframe market. business processing is dominated by i/o and that's where micro's just haven't caught up yet. optical disks may help, but they they'll also be available for mainframes first, so nothing's going to change much for most part. ramblings from the keyboard of Herb Chong... I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble.... UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!water!watdcsu!herbie CSNET: herbie%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet ARPA: herbie%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa NETNORTH, BITNET, EARN: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu
doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (03/11/85)
ME> IBM in the supercomputer market? Not very likely. IBM's strength is ME> in Business with a capital "B". They've failed pretty miserably in ME> past attempts to expand into other markets. About 15 years ago they ME> made a super number-cruncher called the 360/91. They sold 4 of 'em. > > yes, but no-one else sold any either and IBM wasn't seriously in there > to sell more. Au contraire, this was the time that CDC made its fortune selling Seymour Cray's 6400, 6600, and 7600 systems. IBM's supercomputers were designed in direct response to CDC's attempting to steal the scientific marketplace that IBM had "owned" since the original 704. CDC won, IBM lost. IBM tucked its tail 'twixt its legs and abandoned the scientific market entirely. > because it is [IBM], more than anyone else, who control the direction > and rate of progress of the microcomputer market. This is true only of "business" microcomputers. IBM does not, for instance, control the CAD market. Nor does it control the "home computer" market. Nor the engineering workstation market. If IBM did control the entire microcomputer market, Motorola and National might as well scrap their microprocessor designs. (And I might as well go work for IBM :-) > if raw CPU power was all there was to IBM's, a lot of > other people would have a dominant position in the mainframe market. > business processing is dominated by i/o and that's where micro's just > haven't caught up yet. On this we agree. It was indeed IBM's peripherals that brought it to prominence, and (to a large extent) keep IBM in the forefront of business EDP. > all this talk about powerful microcomputers replacing mainframes is > just talk until i/o devices of the speed and capacity of current > mainframe peripherals is available at prices that the average consumer > can afford. Average consumer? We were talking about "replacing mainframes", and the average consumer doesn't have one to replace. :-) -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
conor@Glacier.ARPA (03/17/85)
> all this talk about powerful microcomputers replacing mainframes is > just talk until i/o devices of the speed and capacity of current > mainframe peripherals is available at prices that the average consumer > can afford. > Herb Chong... Hear, hear! I've been using a HP9000 since September, when our local Vax converted to 4.2BSD, and we programmers lost our debugger (plug for Third Eye Software, who wrote the HP-UX debugger). The 9000 is a fast machine. It sits on a desktop and, even using software arithmetic, does 70-80% of a VAX-780+FPA+8Meg for large simulation programs. Unfortunately the disk doesn't keep up. With two, three users running a mix of compile/edit/awk jobs, the CPU utilization factor measured by the monitor program is 20-30%, and disk utilization is at 100%. That's with two 2 CPUs running separate processes, so the total available CPU utilization is 200%. Pretty dissappointing. Where it really hurts is editing - vi a 2000 line file and you'll wait 30-40s for the disk copy. Seems like a waste of a nice machine. Maybe someone at Fort Collins would like to comment? Conor Rafferty (conor@su-glacier.ARPA, conor@su-sierra.ARPA)