On Jan 6, 2007, at 12:08 PM, Rick Fochtman wrote:
----------------------<snip>--------------------------
Without knowing what your day-to-day role is, it's hard to say.
First, simply by not being in denial. Mainframes are not better
because the people who use them are older, the boxes are bigger,
they were around in 1979, and all of your professional peers work
on them. Mainframes are not better because we all know they're
better, and that's that, and anyone who disagrees with me is
obviously one of "them."
-------------------------<unsnip>------------------------
Mainframes ARE better, for many BUSINESS-type applications. The
average business application needs to be able to do huge amounts of
I/O, as opposed to raw number-crunching. Let's face it: most
businesses don't spend a lot of time computing thousands of digits
for pi, or evaluating boundary-layer problems for fluids in pipes,
or simulating weather or nuclear explosions and analyzing
individual particle movements, etc. They're far more likely to be
involved in processing invoices and payments, or inventory
management, or payrolls. All these are I/O intensive operations,
with only a few well-defined calculations involved. But if an
engineer needs to calculate flow resistance in a pipeline, or lift
over a particular wing section, on any of the millions of other
problems that require raw number crunching, sometimes the "squatty
box" is far superior.
-----SNIP------------------------
Rick,
IBM a few years ago introduced a 3838 (?) for number crunching. IIRC
it went down in flames. There did not seem to be a market for such an
animal. I concur with your synopsis.
Ed
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