Re: [SLE] Gnome disappointment

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Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:44:10 +0000
To: suse-linux-e@suse.com

Anders Johansson wrote:
> On Sunday 13 November 2005 04:29, Sid Boyce wrote:
>> If you are AMD, you understand that Intel is likely to unleash some
>> features to render your hardware obsolete in a timeframe that you can't
>> react to speedily enough,
>
> No actually, I don't. You see, the problem is that Intel can't make AMD
> machines obsolete without at the same time making their own machines
> obsolete, which the market won't accept. This is why Itanium failed so
> miserably. Intel is simply locked into its own past.
>
You are no doubt correct, both IBM and more recently Intel have been
shown that they are not masters of the PC architecture. If you are AMD
you probably want to cover all bases - Fear is the main driver in this
industry and it shows - if Itanium had been successful, the air would be
thick with flying pigs, yet some faction within Intel was able to
convince senior management it was the only sane business model and the
one sure way to smash AMD, likewise AMD needed a credible anti-FUD story
to tell.

>
>> with the need for redesigning and retooling,
>> so recoding in microcode gives you the ability to swiftly respond. For
>> years that's how we at Amdahl were able to stay with the twists and
>> turns by IBM that were designed to kill us off.
>
> I think that's slightly different, since the mainframe market is far lower
> volume, IBM is/was in contact with each of their customers (who in many cases
> didn't buiy, they leased), so their ability to introduce new, incompatible
> features is/was far higher than Intel's will ever be
>
Lower numbers, mega bucks, it didn't seem like low volume when growth
rates were so high and the amount of work to turn out a new machine was
so huge. The major stranglehold IBM had on the industry was ownership of
both software and hardware definitions, that's why I was asking our
senior management why we weren't fighting to have the FTC authorities
order that hardware specs be drawn up by a separate industry body. I
obviously got nowhere with that, I'd ask one question and get an answer
to one I didn't ask, instead they kept feeding us a line that Solaris
and SPARC was going to blow away the mainframe. Once we effectively left
the scene, mainframe sales from the one remaining vendor went sky high
once more and we could only drool. It'll be interesting to see how the
guys at PSI (Platform Solutions Inc.) make an impact this time around,
all the mainframe resilience and reliability features in an Itanium
based box + Amdahl firmware running z/OS, Linux, Windows, Solaris x86
and I imagine a lot else also.

>> When IBM started off on
>> that road, we didn't have microcode, so we had to add a FAM (Fast Assist
>> Mode) so that when the new instructions generated an exception, they
>> could be emulated by substituting a series of software instructions - so
>> Microcode and Macrocode appeared in our succeeding products. An
>> ex-colleague remarked last week how amazing it is that the latest
>> greatest stuff like Xen has been standard on mainframes (Amdahl MDF
>> followed by IBM LPAR's) for decades. Eventually IBM got us, not by
>> technology, but by nearly going under themselves.
>
> mainframes created almost all technology we see today. I have said many times
> that the past 30 or so years in computer development could have been skipped
> by giving the 3270 3D accelerated graphics
>
>

SGI and Sun stepped into that slot admirably, and Apple, so the
mainframe makers didn't see the need for or care about graphics. If you
wanted something standard, 3270 was it and if you had higher demands, a
Sun workstation with X3270 Windows did the lot. Now you see lots of
NT/W2K have replaced the Sun kit, perhaps the IBM HMC based on Linux may
drive a change to Linux. Speaking to the smart ex-colleagues, they have
moved some and are moving all the diagnostic tools over to Linux, these
guys always saw great merits in Linux, but the majority of the average
support techs and some managers often tried to give me grief for using
Linux, so it sure was a smug feeling when they all started having Linux
business plans in their presentations.

Regards
Sid.

-- 
Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, licensed Private Pilot
Retired IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support 
Specialist
Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks
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• Previous message: James Ogley: "Re: [SLE] Updating to Gnome 2.12"
• In reply to: Anders Johansson: "Re: [SLE] Gnome disappointment"
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