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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
From: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: IBM and the future
Message-ID: <1098@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 21:24:49 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1098
Posted: Sat Mar  9 21:24:49 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Mar-85 07:43:51 EST
References: <792@topaz.ARPA> <836@ames.UUCP> <426@terak.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Organization: U of Waterloo
Lines: 60
Summary: 

In article <426@terak.UUCP> doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes:
>> what interests me in the next ten to 15 years of computing is:
>> 1) as micros approach mainframes in speed, what's ibm going to do? are
>> they going to enter the supercomputer market by necessity?  are ibm's
>> somewhat stagnate views of computing going to affect the rest of the market
>> with pc/370 ideas?
>
>IBM in the supercomputer market?  Not very likely.  IBM's strength is
>in Business with a capital "B".  They've failed pretty miserably in
>past attempts to expand into other markets.  About 15 years ago they
>made a super number-cruncher called the 360/91.  They sold 4 of 'em.

yes, but no-one else sold any either and IBM wasn't seriously in there
to sell more.  according to informed rumor, the Sierra processors have
changed the structure of the floating point hardware to significantly
decrease the average processing time of the instructions, not that this
is going to have cray worried or anything.  until IBM decides it is
profitable to do so, it will stay out of the supercomputer business.
IBM will never go into the supercomputer market out of neccesity
because it is they, more than anyone else, who control the direction
and rate of progress of the microcomputer market.  only when ALL OTHER
manufacturers decide on something and move in that direction will IBM
be forced to do anything.  history has shown that this is not likely to
happen and things will pretty much continue the way it has.  when IBM
decides it's time to make a supercomputer to challenge cray's, they
will dominate the market in less than five years.  whether this is good
or bad remains to be seen.

>A few years back they came out with a "home computer", the 16K IBM PC,
>which had BASIC in ROM and a cassette port.  Remember that?  Nobody
>bought it.  Instead, businesses bought the PC with dual disk drives,
>and then Winchesters.  So IBM made another run at the "home computer"
>market with the PC-jr.  They didn't sell many of those until they made
>it capable of running business applications like Lotus 1-2-3.  >--
>Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
just as any company, IBM has done some pretty stupid things.  what
counts is that there are enough good things being done and marketed
successfully to make up for it.

all this talk about powerful microcomputers replacing mainframes is
just talk until i/o devices of the speed and capacity of current
mainframe peripherals is available at prices that the average consumer
can afford.  i have been using a microVAX for a bit (running Ultrix)
and my number one gripe about it is that any disk i/o and my programs
grind to a halt.  if raw CPU power was all there was to IBM's, a lot of
other people would have a dominant position in the mainframe market.
business processing is dominated by i/o and that's where micro's just
haven't caught up yet.  optical disks may help, but they they'll also
be available for mainframes first, so nothing's going to change much
for most part.

ramblings from the keyboard of
Herb Chong...

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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