[Info-vax] Vaxes shutting off this week

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 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
> 

As the boxes get faster, someone writes slower software to run on them! 
    Usually, that slower software offers more functionality but it's 
still slower!