On Thu, 2007-06-28 at 01:30 -0400, Pinnacle wrote: > IBM would help tremendously if it did not obsolete its mainframes every 5 > years [...] Companies who used to get 10 years out of a mainframe can > do so no longer because IBM won't permit it.
Tom, things are going to churn *faster*. Apple's going to release a cell phone tomorrow that has 8,000 times the memory of the /145 we used to run IMS on (or 80 3330 spindles if you prefer). BlueGene/L is running at just under 300 *teraflops*. In 50 years, DASD recording density has increased 75 million times, and theoretical densities for perpendicular recording suggest we can beat *that* five times over. Moore's Law has been remarkably stable over the years, and it is widely believed that it will continue to hold for the next few chip generations, 10-20 years out. If IBM doesn't chase the technology, then the competition will, and IBM will die. So you have new m/f generations every couple of years - it's a matter of pure economic survival. (Just for grins, check out the top 100 list of supercomputers at http://www.top500.org/list/2007/06/100 and notice how many of these are IBM's.) Keeping the old iron going on -say- a 10 year commitment while rolling out new iron every two years means that you're supporting six generations of mainframes, four or five of which use parts no longer manufactured. So you warehouse parts, and you don't just store them in a Public Storage warehouse, 'cause you're IBM -- you have to have distributed depots, trained FE personnel, test gear, documentation, guaranteed response time. That costs money (and is one of the big reasons that mainframes are uncompetitive in many situations). IBM hasn't much choice: either innovate or walk away. The prohibitive cost of a run-amok support structure forces that same choice on us. -- David Andrews A. Duda and Sons, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
