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From: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Usenet netnews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Mainframe vs Micro
Message-ID: <1427@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 02:05:20 EST
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.1427
Posted: Mon Jan  5 02:05:20 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 5-Jan-87 06:43:06 EST
References: <658@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@tomcat.UUCP (Tim Kay)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 63

Organization : California Institute of Technology
Keywords: 
From: tim@tomcat.Caltech.Edu (Tim Kay)
Path: tomcat!tim

Ted Holden (IMS) writes:
>Tim Kay (Caltech) writes:
>>Ted Holden (IMS) writes:

>>>There are several points to consider concerning the mainframe/micro question
>>>as it relates to databases. The 32 meg limit doesn't apply to Novell Netware.

>>You are totally in the wrong ball park.  PCs aren't going to encroach on
>>mainfames just because the 32M limit was broken.  A _typical_ drive that
>>IBM sells (3380) has about 600 Mbytes on it.  A _typical_ machine they sell
>>will have anywhere from 10 to 500 of these drives on it.  A PC can handle
>>only two drives.
>
>I'm not the one who's in the wrong ballpark.  The comparison between individual
>PCs and individual mainframes is no more meaningful than that between an
>individual army ant and one of the creatures which ARMIES of such small
>army ants EAT.  What is important is the servers reach a certain level of
>power and sophistication, which they have, and the state of the control soft-
>ware for the army (e.g. Novell's Netware).  These are good enough for such
>PC armies to eat VAX class machines today and I can't believe they won't be
>eating IBM mainframes in another year or two.

A single 3090 with 100 1 gigabyte disks has 100 gigabytes of storage of
mass storage on it.  How many PCs would it take, so that, at two disks
per PC, you could come anywhere near that figure?  Suppose you put two
400 megabyte Eagles on each PC.  You would then have to network over
100 PCs, each of which must make 800 megabytes of data available to the
network.  Would this be workable?  How much degradation would each user
feel from network requests for data?

What is the largest network of PCs that anybody out there has heard of?
(Please respond to me, and I will summarize.)

So, let's build a version of the IBM PC with I/O processors, high
bandwidth point-to-point communications, additional, higher bandwidth
busses, the ability to handle many disk drives, etc., to overcome
the difficulties that I have just
mentioned.  For the CPU, we'll use an 80386, which I agree could be
adequate.  What you now have is a machine somewhere between today's
minicomputers and a mainframes.  You have lost your cost advantage,
and the machine I just described is no longer a personal computer.
But I'll agree that this machine could do what you are claiming.

I have already conceded that smaller computers
might eventually replace lots of mainframes.  But I think
it will take a bit longer than you are seeming to imply.  I certainly
disagree that IBM has lost past sales due to current PCs, and I don't
think they will for a few years yet. 

And, don't get me wrong.  I love PCs, and I am fascinated by what they
can do.  I can't imagine why anybody would buy something like a
System 36, when you could have an AT or three that are just as powerful
(more powerful?) and costs a fraction as much.

Timothy L. Kay				tim@csvax.caltech.edu
Department of Computer Science
Caltech, 256-80
Pasadena, CA  91125