[Info-vax] Vaxes shutting off this week

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <EIadnRboWKWMeDbUnZ2dnUVZ_sWWnZ2d at giganews.com>,
	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article <goevqd$a2o$2 at pcls4.std.com>,
>> 	moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>>> billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>>
>>>> In article <goeb8m$fr6$2 at pcls6.std.com>,
>>>> 	moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>>>>>>   Hmm.. I wonder what would have happened had VAX continued on the path 
>>>>>>   and then did what all of the other processors had to do get more 
>>>>>>   through-put, go multi-core with more front-end cache...
>>>>>>   Hmm.. I wonder what would have happened had PDP-11 continued on the path 
>>>>>>   and then did what all of the other processors had to do get more 
>>>>>>   through-put, go multi-core with more front-end cache...
>>>>> A big difference is that the PDP and the VAX ran their courses and were
>>>>> discontinued at an appropiate time.  
>>>> Some people might not agree with that notion.  PDP-11 development was
>>>> continued long after Dec sold it off to Mentec.  And I mean processor
>>>> development, not just OS and software support.  And many people here
>>>> have suggested that while Alpha was a great idea there was a place for
>>>> VAX to continue as well.  The world never went completely RISC and the
>>>> VAX was probably better than any other non-RISC processor.
>>> Somewhat supports my claim.  The PDP-11 was allowed to make money for
>>> pretty much as long as it was able to, for somebody.  
>> 
>> And longer except the current owners have decided not to deal with it
>> anymore.  Much to the lament of more people than I can count who are
>> still using PDP-11's everyday fro real work.
>> 
>>>                                                       But being restricted
>>> to 64K of memory at once is a big restriction, except for smaller control
>>> modules. 
>> 
>> Hmmm...  Let's see.  As recently as about 10 years ago I went out to
>> Joisey to pick up a bunch of RA disks.  The place I went to had converted
>> all their data storage over to SCSI. They were, however, still happily
>> running all of their business on PDP-11's.  They were (are?) one of the
>> largest mortgage brokerage firms on the east coast.  Doing it all on RSTS.
>> There are a lot of things other than "smaller control modules" that can
>> still be done quite effectively on less hardware than a Cray.
>> 
>>>            (how much memory is really needed for a computer-controlled 
>>> traffic light even with lots of sensors to operate?  How about your
>>> microwave?)  
>> 
>> Well, most of my PDP-11's actually have 2-4 Meg of memory and handle it
>> within the 64K space quite well.  Even UCSD-Pascal could do "virtual
>> arrays" making them limited by disk space rather than memory size.  Also,
>> with overlays program size isn't much of a problem either.  I may not
>> be able to render the graphics for "Jurasic Park" on my PDP-11, but there
>> are a lot of businesses that would find more than enough horsepower in
>> one.
>> 
>>>              The VAX was a great non-RISC instruction set and was widely
>>> taught between the PDP-11 era and when x86 PCs were so ubiquitous.
>> 
>> And, just think how the VAXen we know an love would perform if all we
>> did was make the processor using todays technology.  Any guess at how
>> fast they might be?
> 
> They would be faster.  They still wouldn't be able to keep up with 
> today's RISC architectures!

And just how fast do they need to be to get the job done?  I have a
Windows 2003 Server box serving a lab of ThinClients.  I have yet to
see it hit 10% CPU.  Now, if businesses whole interest is keeping up
with some other processor, yeah, they won't make the grade.  But, if
they are fast enough to get the job done when the job needs to be done,
what, exactly, is the advantage of RISC?  

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>