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The x86 world is getting I/O channels in the form of "SmartNICs" which are NICs with substantial processing power.

• rbanffy 4y ago
  They also have it with disks local and remote. The idea is that the CPU is running user code 100% of the time and that it doesn’t need to wait for anything.
  • neverartful 4y ago
    With the mainframe all disks are external. This diagram [0] does a good job of showing that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_key_data#/media/File:IBM_CKD_Arch.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_key_data#/media/File:IBM...
    • HyperSane 4y ago
      Most enterprise servers use external storage arrays.
  • trasz 4y ago
    In the PC world this has been done couple of times, eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2O https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2O from the late 90’s. I think the real reason why it works for mainframes is that their operating system is so primitive, so it’s easy to cross layers - because there are so few of them. z/OS is closer to MS-DOS than to Unix in that regard.