The upside is probably opportunity cost related essentially like mainframes of yore. Technically they could handle higher throughput than the workstations at th

The upside is probably opportunity cost related essentially like mainframes of yore. Technically they could handle higher throughput than the workstations at the start and even today but once developed they became a dead end compared to more parallel approaches. That sort of quantity vs quality thing has happened a lot throughout history. The "VHS beats Betamax" moments that goes way further back but with more obscure examples.