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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/19/2024 4:49 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> 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_.

I said that it was not ready.

You made some assumptions about what I meant by ready.

Some assumptions that was wrong.

>         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. 

I think that is common knowledge.

>                                            That doesn't mean
> that they are useful for VMS.

Meaning that it is irrelevant for the topic of what VSI should
have ported to.

> 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.

Yes, because it was pointless.

It does not matter that x86-64 is currently #1 and will be around
for decades. What matters is that most sites does not have
ARM servers today.

Arne