steve ("Steve" Stevenson) (07/03/90)
[Found these on comp.sys.super. Part of the taxonomy fights. Steve] (Original was sent to Eugene Miya) .... here's a few tidbits - "classic" (latin?) "PC" - IBMus simplarium "WS" - VMEius sunarie "mini" - vaxen plagarium "mainframe" - IBMus amdahlie "supercomputer" - seymourii realium "power" definitions "PC" = .1 mip, 10 MB (class 1) "WS" = 1 mip, 100 MB (2) "mini" = 10 mip, 1000 MB (3) "mainframe" = 100 mip, 10000 MB (4) "super" = 1000 mip, 100000 MB (5) scale according to year - multiply each factor by 10/class every 10 years mip is per processor, MB is per system (capacity) "money" definitions "PC" - $1,000 -- 10,000 "WS" - 10,000 - 100,000 "mini" - 100,000 -- 1,000,000 "mainframe" - 1,000,000 -- 10,000,000 "supercomputer" - 10,000,000 -- 100,000,000 "people" definitions PC - enough machine to keep an accountant's hands full WS - enough machine to keep an engineer's hands full mini - enough machine to keep a computer systems administrator's hands full mainframe - enough machine to keep a crew of sys admins' hands full supercomputer - enough machine to keep a national lab full of sys admins busy classic "os" definitions PC - DOS WS - BSD mini - VMS mainframe - MVS supercomputer - doesn't matter, the labs write their own :-) and on and on and on... have you heard more, hopefully humorous, definitions? i won't even bite on what a minisuper or supermini is :-) ...