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From: brandon@tdi2.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: mainframe vs Micro
Message-ID: <133@tdi2.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Jan-87 23:03:40 EST
Article-I.D.: tdi2.133
Posted: Sun Jan 11 23:03:40 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Jan-87 01:17:06 EST
References: <658@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: brandon@tdi2.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Tridelta Industries, Inc., Mentor, OH
Lines: 102

Quoted from <658@imsvax.UUCP> ["Re: Mainframe vs Micro"], by ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)...
+---------------
| Tim Kay (Caltech) writes:
| >In article <657@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) 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.  One of the main concerns in designing the XA architecture
| >at IBM was that installations were running out of address space for numbering
| >devices (disks, tape drives, terminals, CTCAs, etc.).  The old 370
| >architecture can handle 4,096 devices!  The new XA architecture can handle
| >significantly more.
| 
| 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.
+---------------

Show me a *network* on a PC whose data transfer rate is as fast as our ancient
14" Fujitsu drives (B-something-or-other, not Eagles), much less the current
breed of fast hard disks.  I would hesitate to use networked PCs for our
database application -- and I am currently considering machines to replace
our Plexus P/60 for that, as it isn't capable of handling 18 users running
what is currently two applications, one in Unify and one in RM/COBOL.  (I am
in the midst of evaluating 4GLs to remedy this; looks like Progress will be
the one we use.  However, my speed tests don't show too much of an improvement
from our current system to any of the 4GLs I have tested.)  Any suggestions?

+---------------
| >Typically, a single machine configured as above is not adequate, so IBM
| >offers (and has offered for about a thousand years now) the ability to
| >network these large machines.  There are installations that have dozens
| >of the machines (of the size I just mentioned) networked together.
| 
| And cost many times what equivalent compute power in the form of PCs would.
| As long as such systems could do things which small computers physically
| couldn't do, such costs could have been justified.  The day when all such bets
| are off is rapidly approaching.
+---------------

Nevertheless, the speed issue remains.  You might network together 500 PCs to
make the user-equivalent of an Amdahl, but network accesses will make it a lot
slower than the Amdahl...

+---------------
| >The present discussion started when a claim was put forward that PCs are cutting
| >into IBM's mainframe market.  DEC offers no machine that is anywhere near the
| >power of IBM's mainframes.  IBM can _routinely_ put hundreds of terminals
| >on a single machine, and it will perform well. ......
| 
| Assuming all but a few of these terminals are turned off.  At every mainframe
| installation I've ever worked at or with, there was money to be made by some
| one selling IBM or Univac PUNCHING BAGS, just ordinary 70 lb heavy bags with
| "IBM" or "UNIVAC" or maybe "CDC" written on them.  The people would have lined
| up.  I mean, if any of these statements about mainframes serving 200 or 700
| users at minimal (one guy quoted .05 for a CDC) load were true, PCs would
| never have seen the light of day.  Get serious.
+---------------

Even as slow as it was, I preferred using CSU's IBM 370 to using a PC.  And
networked PCs I used at the same time made the bogged-down 43xx look fast by
comparison.  Get serious.

+---------------
| >I will rephrase a statement that I made earlier.  Most people have absolutely
| >no idea what the bulk of the computing power in this country is used for.
| 
| I've been involved with porting mainframe applications to small computers
| for some time now, mostly because people finally couldn't stand dealing
| with the mainframes.  Aside from the obvious database kinds of things,
| these have included large Fortran programs, including the Census X-11
| time series routine and a couple of risk-analysis types of programs from
| Social Security in Baltimore, all of which ran way the hell faster on
| generic 68000 machines than they ever did on these organizations' Univac
| mainframes.  Such applications are probably pretty typical of how the
| "bulk of the computing power in this country" is used.
+---------------

No doubt.  And how many other things were running on the mainframe, as opposed
to how many other things were running on the 68000?  Many 68020 machines run
slower than 68000 machines:  the 68020s sold by Plexus have 80 user limits,
whereas the 68000s (until recently) were limited to 40 users.  Is this a
reason to tout 68000s as faster than 68020s?

++Brandon
-- 
``for is he not of the Children of Luthien?  Never shall that line fail, though
the years may lengthen beyond count.''  --J. R. R. Tolkien

Brandon S. Allbery	           UUCP: cbatt!cwruecmp!ncoast!tdi2!brandon
Tridelta Industries, Inc.         CSNET: ncoast!allbery@Case
7350 Corporate Blvd.	       INTERNET: ncoast!allbery%Case.CSNET@relay.CS.NET
Mentor, Ohio 44060		  PHONE: +1 216 255 1080 (home) +1 216 974 9210