Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!ron@brl-vgr 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 NatalieOh 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