[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 12-09-30 23:45, Michael Moroney wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for posting that.  I'm not too far from the other end of that
>> particular line (in Ayer, Mass.) and I've checked out the converter
>> station there a few times and was a little curious about your end.
> 
> To see insive the AC to DC converter:
> 
> http://www.hydroquebec.com/learning/transport/grandes-distances.html
> 
> It is at bottom right of the page, you click on it and you get bigger
> picture. Looks more like a Hollywood set than a real high power electric
> facility.
> 
> BTW, the AC 3 phase lines are at 735kv, not 750 as I had stated.
> 
> 
> BTW, Hydro Québec used to be a big VMS shop and one of the largest
> DECnet private networks linking all its facilities to control the
> dams/generators.
> 
> 
> With regards to Digital, they failed to recognize and adopt change
> beause they feared it would cannabalise their more profitable products.
> This failure cannabalised the company.
> 
> Had Digital provided market leadership with pricing of larger machines,
> outfits such as Google may have started with an Alpha and grown with
> fewer larger machines instead of a gazillion small inexpensive PC
> commodity boxes.
> 
> 
> The fact that outfits such as Google did succeed with a gazillion PCs
> does not mean that this is the best solution. It means that those who
> could have provided the better solution (Dec, HP, Sun, IBM) failed to
> provide it in a cost competitive way.
> 

Weren't racks of a "gazillion" DS10Ls a good solution for some problems? 
  It seems that plenty of them were made and sold.

Perhaps there are some applications better suited to many processors 
than to just one or a few large processors ...