[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[John Wallace]

On Mar 14, 9:15 am, John Wallace <johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 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 athttp://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPad-2-Carries-Bill-of-Ma...

there is a mis-speak in this post. Samsung LCDs are used in some Apple
products, but not in this particular one. Sorry. Anyway, you have the
URL for this one and there are lots of similar ones around if you want
original sources that don't rely on my memory :)