4 ms·

It comes full circle: computers used to be the size of a building, and now what we call data centers are again the sizes of buildings (and in many cases can be

by jmount 8y ago

It comes full circle: computers used to be the size of a building, and now what we call data centers are again the sizes of buildings (and in many cases can be considered a large distributed computer). I've always enjoyed this article on the topic: Myer, Sutherland "On the Design of Display Processors" http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland-design-of-display-processors.pdf http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland...

jordache 8y ago
poor analogy IMO. the old building sized computer was only adequate for a single tenant's use. Nowadays the large data centers facilities hundreds of thousands of organizations' infrastructures
- Retric 8y ago
  Old building sized computers often supported multiple organizations via time sharing etc. The NSA, Google, and many other who have reached a point here single buildings are not enough computing power. If anything the number of orgs with building sized computers is probably similar. Which feels strange but it’s more about budgets than anything else.
  - jordache 8y ago
    not simultanesouly they did not.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Stratoscope 8y ago
      > not [simultaneously] they did not. Are you referring to this part of the parent comment? "Old building sized computers often supported multiple organizations via time sharing etc." I worked at Tymshare in the early 1970s, and I can assure you that we supported many simultaneous users and organizations who dialed into our Tymnet nodes with their Teletypes and other terminals to connect to our building sized computers. That was the whole point of the company, and the very thing it was named after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    Perhaps they need to reevaluate their mission statement
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Reminds me of a story my dad told about studying CS at Waterloo in the 70s. Time sharing == bringing your punch cards in at 3am because the queue was shorter then. :) He said those nights were the best experiences of his time at University (aside from meeting my mom).
thanatropism 8y ago
That's a brilliant paper. This might not be your scene at all, but someone made drawings and read from Gilles Deleuze's treatise on "stratoanalysis". It's long winded and completely unlike that paper but it generalizes the idea, or at least I think it does. https://youtu.be/Ws2b5aOhrdA https://youtu.be/Ws2b5aOhrdA

by jmount 8y ago

jordache 8y ago

poor analogy IMO. the old building sized computer was only adequate for a single tenant's use. Nowadays the large data centers facilities hundreds of thousands of organizations' infrastructures

Retric 8y ago
Old building sized computers often supported multiple organizations via time sharing etc. The NSA, Google, and many other who have reached a point here single buildings are not enough computing power. If anything the number of orgs with building sized computers is probably similar. Which feels strange but it’s more about budgets than anything else.
- jordache 8y ago
  not simultanesouly they did not.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    > not [simultaneously] they did not. Are you referring to this part of the parent comment? "Old building sized computers often supported multiple organizations via time sharing etc." I worked at Tymshare in the early 1970s, and I can assure you that we supported many simultaneous users and organizations who dialed into our Tymnet nodes with their Teletypes and other terminals to connect to our building sized computers. That was the whole point of the company, and the very thing it was named after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
- tomc1985 8y ago
  Perhaps they need to reevaluate their mission statement
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Reminds me of a story my dad told about studying CS at Waterloo in the 70s. Time sharing == bringing your punch cards in at 3am because the queue was shorter then. :) He said those nights were the best experiences of his time at University (aside from meeting my mom).

thanatropism 8y ago

That's a brilliant paper. This might not be your scene at all, but someone made drawings and read from Gilles Deleuze's treatise on "stratoanalysis". It's long winded and completely unlike that paper but it generalizes the idea, or at least I think it does. https://youtu.be/Ws2b5aOhrdA https://youtu.be/Ws2b5aOhrdA