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From: ron%brl-vgr@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:  IBM vs VAX/unix
Message-ID: <17464@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Mar-84 12:18:37 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.17464
Posted: Mon Mar 12 12:18:37 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Mar-84 09:26:24 EST
Lines: 41

From:      Ron Natalie 

Oh well, time to start the big computer/little computer flames.
I agree with all of your first paragraph that anything that can
be put on one chip is cheap, etc.  One of the big problems is that
industry has this "one chip" CPU brain-set.  Companies can't seem
to succeed by releasing a "two chip" CPU even if it costs only
50% more but provides 300% of the capacity.  This dates back even
to the 6800.  Original plans called for an even nicer implementation
of this chip, but it had to be scaled back because it wouldn't fit
into one IC and marketing decided no one would buy a two chip CPU
regardless of how good it was.

You seem to limit yourself to the idea that only microprocessor CPU's
are cheap.  *WRONG*  The CPU these days is almost always the cheapest
part.  You can get a 11/780 CPU (just the boards and backplane) for
about $50,000.  However the minimal 780 system costs $140,000 (with
the console terminals as the only peripheral).  The minimal practical
configuration is abou $270,000.

I totally disagree with your last paragraph.  While a IBM PC is a wonderful
computer for home and I really like toting a Grid Compass on travel with me
but I wouldn't want to really have to work on one.  A central computer has
some of the following advantages:

1.  Since the cost is spread out over several users you can purchase
things like more expensive peripherals, large amounts of memory, etc...
that are used less frequently by any one user, but allows it to be
accessible when needed.

2.  There is more CPU headroom for the reason specified in #1.

3.  Someone else usually backs it up.

4.  System support is shared by all the users.  Which means one copy
of system software.  (On our systems, this is put in RAM disk).

5.  Communications between users on a single machine is almost always
easier than networking.

-Ron