[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2012-10-02 14:41, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> In article <k4em91$iuh$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist
> <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>
>> You know, you keep saying "mainfraime class x86". I'm not sure I know
>> what that is. In reality, when we talk about the CPUs themself, they are
>> pretty much the same in all machines. There isn't any faster ones in
>> "mainframe class" machines.
>
> I think this has been true for a long time.  30 years ago, maybe CPUs in
> mainframes were faster than in PCs, but today the opposite is probably
> true.  With VAX (at least the later models) and ALPHA, the same CPU was
> available from desktop to datacenter.  OK, maybe big machines had MORE
> CPUs, but not faster ones.  At least back then, the bigger machines had
> more internal storage, more slots for PCI cards, more memory etc.  Speed
> was not a reason to buy them.

Right. And the trend have only continued. Mainframes today are most 
likely slower if you count raw computing power (just check what CPUs are 
the base for the top 100 supercomputers in the world).
Memory have now come to a point where you can put enough in a PC that 
you're hitting other problems. Disk is still one area where you'll see a 
difference between a mainframe and a PC. Both in the speed and quality 
of disks, the number of disks you can connect to the machine, and speed 
of controllers and datapaths.

However, for really big data sets, you'll still have to farm it out to 
many machines, even if you are using mainframes. And then we come back 
to the same basic truth again. Once your software can deal with the data 
being spread over many machines, why buy expensive machines when cheap 
ones do the work just as well? You could argue that it's cheaper since 
you have fewer machines. But at this point, the dominating cost is 
actually the disks, and not the machines. Not to mention the higher 
vulnerability you get with fewer machines.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol