[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[John Wallace]

On Mar 14, 12:01 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> John Wallace schrieb:
>
>
>
> > And they got it. Mitsubishi and Samsung had licenced Alpha product,
> > but factors outside their control
>
> And in which way did this help Alpha (or DEC)?
> Mitsubishi is a car maker in the first place
> and Samsung produces (afaik) predominantly low-tech
> like DRAM and consumer electronics (and rather crappy
> one in my experience).
> Had DEC been able to struck a deal like IBM did with
> Motorola, that would have made a difference.
>
>
>
> > "IA64 ... increased clock speeds"
>
> > Are you serious?
>
> > IA64 in 2004: Around 1.6GHz max.
>
> at least some progress compared to the original 900Mhz ...

"Samsung produces (afaik) predominantly low-tech like DRAM and
consumer electronics"

Ouch, in so many ways. But perhaps not a surprise.

What's low-tech about modern high-end consumer chips? A modern high
end ARM-based mobile phone is one of the most amazing pieces of
advanced electronics hardware that you're likely to see.

There are already people on the Raspberry Pi mailing list (RPi is a ~
$35 credit card size ARM system) talking about running VMS. OK they
run it for fun, under SIMH on Fedora, but actually it's old hat,
people have been running VMS on ARM based PDAs for a decade or more.
The Android marketplace has a pre-built SIMH available for download.
What Raspberry Pi changes is the price, often by a factor of ten or
more, and the convenience and performance (by a somewhat smaller
factor, but still very worthwhile).

Despite Intel's efforts of the last few years, their x86 folk still
have nothing technically or commercially to compete with a modern ARM-
based (or even MIPS-based) "system on chip", as used in practically
every consumer appliance from broadband routers via mobile phones to
TVs and media servers and ... The firmware quality in these things is
frequently rubbish, but that's another story.

Stick "ipad teardown isuppli" into your favourite search engine and
learn about what kind of role the Samsung empire plays in the modern
volume semiconductor industry (as well as the consumer electronics
industry in general).

To save readers the hassle: in an iPad 2, Samsung supply the flash
memory, the LCD display and part of its control electronics, the
multicore ARM processors, and ... well, go see for yourself at
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPad-2-Carries-Bill-of-Materials-of-$326-60-IHS-iSuppli-Teardown-Analysis-Shows.aspx