[Info-vax] OT: news from the trenches (re: Solaris)

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> IBM is not going to reacquire the fabs, and they're not going to get 
> back into either the x86 or the fab business, and it would not surprise 
> me to see IBM eventually migrate to commodity x86-64 processors even on 
> their mainframes, assuming they don't spin off the z business.

Unless you're talking about emulation and there are a few choices there,
there is no way to run a mainframe on x86 processors nor commodity anything.

All the software ever written for the IBM mainframe depends on that
specific architecture and ISA. From 1964 until today the OS has never been
ported to another platform and it won't ever be. To get off the box you
have to emulate the hardware. The OS is too big and too complicated and
most of all too closely coupled to the hardware (which is why it works so
well) to ever be ported.

> > Yeah but you seem to have suggested there's a question whether VMS can 
> > or should run on cheap hardware given the VMS customer is typically a 
> > high end customer.
> 
> You're suggesting that x86-64 isn't high-end

That's right!

> > If you think about it I'm not sure porting VMS to Intel is not going to 
> > be suicidal. After they see they can run on cheaper hardware, isn't 
> > cheaper software the next step? And Linux is free and eventually some 
> > pinhead is not going to approve the budget for that wierd OS nobody 
> > ever heard of, since Linux is free...
> 
> Have you ported OpenVMS applications to Unix?

No, I have about a week or so experience with OpenVMS. And I'm not talking
about porting. I'm talking about customers abandoning/replacing. I think
that's going to happen if VMS tries to compete with *NIX and be just
another Linux/UNIX substitute. I hope they don't try doing that. I would
like to see the OS running on top quality (non-Intel) hardware and be a
prime product.

> The only bet against Intel and high-volume x86-64 I can see here is 
> with ARM

Everybody seems to believe Intel is always going to be here. I realize it
seems like that today but tomorrow could be different.

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