Haven't the "small" machines really become big machines when you take into account 1. cpu power. 2. memory 3. gigabytes of storage 4. dasd access speed And when you add a real operating system like Linux the box puffs up even bigger in throughput.
And besides - think of all the waisted desktop cycles that the "SETI" project recoups. Everything big used to be larger than a refridgerator box. Now the same thing has shrunk to about the size of a suitcase or less. Norman On Wed, 6 Feb 2002, Post, Mark K wrote: > An interesting article in InfoWorld. Ellison is making outrageous > statements, as usual, but I'm wondering just what implications they might > have in terms of Oracle support for its products on non-Intel platforms. > > 'Oracle is about to replace three Unix servers that run the bulk of its > business applications with a cluster of Intel servers running Linux, Oracle > Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said Wednesday. He also > predicted the "inevitable" demise of large servers systems, exposing a > potential conflict of interest with longtime ally Sun Microsystems.' > > '"We'll be on Linux no later than the summer, so we'll be running our whole > business on Linux," he said.' > > '"It will be several years before the big machine dies," he said, "but > inevitably the big machine will die."' > > http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/01/31/020131hnlarrye.xml > > > Mark Post >
