4 ms·
Every time one of these articles comes along we hear about fast I/O and how other hardware can't handle the volume. Why not? What makes mainframe hardware so sp
by ralphc 6y ago
Every time one of these articles comes along we hear about fast I/O and how other hardware can't handle the volume. Why not? What makes mainframe hardware so special that it can't be duplicated in other architectures?
- neverartful 6y agoGreat questions. I've often wondered the same thing. I strongly suspect that the biggest impediment might be the threat of litigation for patent infringement. IBM has fought fiercely in the past to protect their crown jewels.
- temac 6y agoThe chips are huge and numerous & you would have to boostrap a market to compete, that's hard. Technically it can be "duplicated", but in the same sense that Apple can make a state of the art processor better than Intel: you have to assemble a big first class team, a shitload of money, and persist during 10 years. If you want to compete on a similar field as mainframes you also need extreme reliability, and that's even more expensive to design. If you relax the requirements and make some quite special purpose hardware arguably it should be "easy" enough to make some fast I/O that can handle volume; but then your market will be small, niche most of the time.
- lboc 6y agoz15 (latest-gen) hardware technical intro here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/sg248850.pdf http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/sg248850.pdf