[Info-vax] report of the last "rendez-vous autour de VMS" (2-FEB-2024)

[Dan Cross]

In article <uvu841$33rl6$2 at dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 4/19/2024 11:51 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <uvttut$31g69$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 4/18/2024 7:05 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>>> In article <uvrpvg$2dbgu$3 at dont-email.me>,
>>>> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>>> On 4/17/2024 11:29 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 22:27:58 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>>>> But VMS could not wait years for a new CPU.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> VMS wasn’t “waiting” for anything. It was customers waiting for VMS.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. Because VSI ported to a CPU that was ready. Instead of to a CPU
>>>>> that may be ready some day in the future.
>>>>
>>>> ARM is ready right now.
>>>
>>> You can buy an ARM server or rent an ARM VM in a public
>>> cloud if you search for it.
>>>
>>> But very few of the VMS customers will have ARM servers
>>> or ARM VM's today.
>>>
>>> So even though ARM would have been better than Itanium,
>>> because it is possible to buy a new one, then it would
>>> still have been a market disaster as VMS would still be
>>> "that weird OS that requires different HW than the
>>> rest of our stuff".
>> 
>> I see you omitted the rest of my post in which I
>> largely agreed with you.  The point was that you are
>> mistaken in asserting earlier that ARM is not ready.
>> It absolutely is.
>
>No. In this context being ready means that the CPU
>has a position in the market where VMS users will consider
>it an acceptable platform - and it does not. Maybe it will
>in 10 years, maybe in 20 years. But not today.

That might have been what you _meant_, but that's not what you
_said_.  What _I_ mean and what I said is that server-class ARM
machines exist, and they are ready for production use now, and
they are eating into the x86 server market.  That doesn't mean
that they are useful for VMS.

Again, you omitted the context around what I wrote, in which I
said that the "readiness" of ARM was irrelevant, as x86 will
remain with us for decades to come.

	- Dan C.