edja...@phoenixsoftware.com (Ed Jaffe) writes: > On 8/22/2017 4:27 AM, R.S. wrote: >> >> The above is some simplification, however I heard A LOT OF zBX, saw >> a lot of presentations, and IBMers never ever convinced me the zBX >> is something more than LAN-attached rack. > > zBX was a mistake. Every company makes them.
for at least past ten years, large public cloud operators have been claiming that they assemble their own systems at 1/3rd the price of brand name server vendors. their large megadatacenters having hundreds of thousands of these system blades. Within past couple years, system processor chip makers have been saying that they ship over half their chips to these large megadatacenters ... significantly changing large datacenter model (and possibly contributing to IBM selling off its server business). Each one of these blades having upwards of ten times the processing power of max. configured z14 ... and a single megadatacenter will have several hundred thousand of these blades, and there are large scores of these megadatacenters around the world. more than 30 years ago early 1979, I got con'ed into doing 4341 benchmarks (on engineering 4341, they hadn't started shipping yet) for LLNL that was looking at getting 70 4341s for computer farm (sort of leading edge of cluster supercomputers). starting in the early 80s, we were working with director of NSF on inter-connecting the NSF supercomputer centerrs. We were suppose to get $20M ... but then congres cuts the budget and things drag on for sometime while we continue to work with the director. I had also done a proposal to do racks of processor chips ... racks with arbitrary mix of cards with arbitrary mix of 370 & 801/risc CMOS chips. This is old email having scheduled meeting with director of NSF but also a week of meetings at research on racks full of arbitrary mix 370 & 801/risc chips (I had to get somebody to fill in for me at the NSF meetings) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315 I had project I called HSDT that had T1 and faster speed links ... including connectivity to IBM mainframes using non-IBM controllers. some HSDT email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hsdt Old email about doing CP (vm370) internals class and meetings with NSF about connecting NSF supercomputer centers http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#email850930 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#email851114 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#email851116 some more HSDT & NSF http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email860505 more NSF related email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet eventually NSF releases a RFP (in part based on what we already have running in HSDT), but internal politics prevents us from bidding, director of NSF tries to help by writting letter to the company (with support from other agencies) copying the CEO ... but that just makes the internal politics worse. As regional networks connect into the center, it evolves into the NSFNET backbone, precursor to modern internet. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/ more HSDT email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hsdt during this period, the communication group is spreading misinformation internally, even claiming that SNA/VTAM can be used ... even tho SNA/VTAM doesn't support TCP/IP and 37x5 boxes doesn't support more than 56kbits/sec links. Somebody collects much of the mis-information email and sends us a copy ... significantly clipped and redacted to protect the guilty http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109 there is not a lot of interest within IBM about including 370 chips in cluster racks ... so eventually it is only 801/risc power chips. We are working with national labs and supercomputer centers on cluster scaleup for scientific/technical as well as RDBMS vendors on commercial cluster scaleup. past reference JAN1992 meeting in Oracle CEO's office about commercial cluster scaleup http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13 within a couple weeks of the Oracle meeting, cluster scaleup was transferred, announced as supercomputer, and we were told that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. 17Feb1992 press about scientific/technical *ONLY* http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 later in the spring 11May1992 press, IBM surprised in national lab interest in cluster supercomputers http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 more cluster scaleup email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
