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

[JF Mezei]

On 15-03-12 09:50, lists at openmailbox.org wrote:

> As you know IBM didn't design x86 and it was never their baby.

In hindsight, imagine if they had designed a low end 370 chip for
personal computers and got Gates to build DOS to the 370 instead of 8088.

Of course, a large corporation is prevented from going that way because
making an affordable 370 based computer is tantamount to cannibalasing
higher end sales. DEC also suffered that fate.

Had IBM made the 370 into "PC" scale, it would have been 370 against the
68k and the environment would be very different today. Perhaps Alpha
would have replaced the PowePC chip since IBM would have focused on its
370/390 or whatever it is called this week. Intel would still just a a
component manufacturer with a couple of toy controllers.

> to run specifically on those architectures. Selling off z/Arch and POWER
> fab is a major directional change

Are they selling only the fab business or the chip design for the 360/z
and Power architectures ?  If they retain the chip design, then they are
like Apple, designing their own chips and getting a vanialla FAB build them.

Note that IBM has traditionally been an R&D leader for FAB technooogies.
So interesting to see them let go of that leadership.

a lowly 8086 in enterprise grade enclosure and enterprise grade remote
management is more worthy than a 200 ghZ Power chip in a desktop
el-cheapo PC with a single 1TB slow SATA drive,