[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> Since I am good at asking stupid questions...
> 
> 
> Assuming, for the sake of discussion that todays's x86 , Power and the
> architecture that started as the 360 have equal CPU horsepower.
> 
> In what way does a mainframe from IBM have more horsepower than some 1U
> commodity x86 server ? Does it have much greater IO capabilities ?
> Faster memory than the quickpath interconects ?
> 
> 
> And if todays' mainframes differ in performance because they actually
> have more CPUs, (even if x86s), doesn't that still result in electrical
> power savings from reduced fans, power supply overhead, system disk
> power etc ?

Let's go back and look at the past, even though Steve will disparage the 
effort.

Both VAX 6000 class systems and MicroVAX 3100 systems used basically the 
same CPUs.  So why have both?  And why pay so much more for the 6000 
class systems?

For the disks, the MicroVAX 3100 systems had a rather stupid 50 pin SCSI 
controller, and the speed was, well, "not speed".  Now, not that I was a 
fan of the BI bus, but the 6000 class systems had much better 
capabilities at moving data.  CPU speed is not everything in a system.