The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Phil Smith III) writes: > Which is the end of the story, boys and girls. For, while so many > people focus on how the PC has damaged the mainframe, the mainframe > still stands tall. What the PC was meant to destroy, it did destroy - > the minis and superminis. DEC went from top of the heap (Queen > Elizabeth in Boston harbor for DECWorld) to non-existence in less than > 10 years. DG is no more. Wang is no more. The PC destroyed them > all. we were spending some time in SCI (as well as FCS and HIPPI) meetings. both Sequent and DG would build an SCI machine with four (intel) processor boards ... for 256process numa machine (convex built an sci machine with two hp/risc processor board ... for 128processor numa machine). both DG and sequent are gone ... sequent being absorbed by ibm ... and some recent references that the only surviving sequent technology may be found in some contributions to linux. HP's superdome may or may not be considered to be the exemplar follow-on. a couple recent posts on sci/numa machines: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard? wang signed a deal with austin (and some of the austin people actually left and went to work for wang) to use rs/6000 as their hardware platform (getting out of the hardware business). in some of the a.f.c. posts, i've frequently pointed out that the late 70s and early 80s saw a significant uptake of mid-range machines in the departmental server market segment ... both vm/43xx and vax/vms ... with vm/43xx actually having larger install base than vax/vms (in part because there were numerous large customer orders for multiple hundred 43xx machines at a time). by the mid-80s that market segment was starting to be taken over by workstations and large PCs (with corresponding drop-off in sales of 43xx and vax machines). Later the more powerful PCs would also take over much of the workstation market. misc. old email mentioning various happenings around 43xx http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx there had been anticipation that the introduction of the 4361/4381 would see compareable uptake to 4331/4341 ... but by then, the market was already starting to move to workstations and larger PCs. a couple past posts given domestic and world-wide vax numbers, sliced & diced by model and yr (post 85, the numbers are primarily micro-vax): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#37 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#31 PDP-1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
