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To: minnow68 who wrote (32)	3/14/2001 12:59:45 AM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 47

Why? Mainframes processors suck compared to current Athlons or PIIIs. The reason that mainframes cost so much is not the fancy processors. They cost so much because of the incredible reliability, massive I/O capability, and most of all, the backward compatibility. The servers being developed with McKinley right now are going after the incredible reliability and massive I/O capability. Ask Tenchusatsu. Backward compatibility with S390 SW, yes, forget that one. Do you think S390 will still be here in 15 years though? IBM S390 processors are not slow. It's hard to compare MIPs with whatever in a Dell. Where I work, we have a 16 CPU Sun box that runs circles around our mainframe. So what's with the recent articles about a single S390 running Linux and replacing 50 or 60 Sun boxes? So let's assume Intel completely kills off the mainframe. Great, IMHO, Intel _might_ gross a penny for every dollar of gross that IBM lost. I don't think so. IBM still does up in the billions, WAG 6 or 6 billion a year in 390, just in sales. Service probably doubles that. I'll take a shot at that business. AND, you may get to replace all those old 370, 390 and all the clone boxes. Not to be sneezed at, plus, there is something to be said for the prestige part. A 16, 24 or 32 way McKinley box will not go cheap, should be well up in the hundreds of thousands each. The processors should scale up in cost also, as the big cache Xeon does today. Still, I agree with you in a way in that, by far, the Sun market is where Intel and the alliance OEMs have the crosshairs aimed. TV

To: minnow68 who wrote (32)	3/14/2001 8:30:57 AM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 47

Re: Mainframes processors suck compared to current Athlons or PIIIs I remember being told by an industry Guru (who's name you'd probably all recognize) that the mainframe was dead - and he said this about 12 years ago. The key: there are no new sites!. And over the next few years IBM stock tanked at the same time the NAZ was starting to soar. But a funny thing happened - even though there weren't any new sites, the existing sites kept upgrading and expanding their mainframe installations (and IBM's stock took off, too). It seems that for some applications, the mainframe's combination of reliability, i/o, and ability to run the existing software base keeps it the best solution. I've always remembered how very prescient that "no new sites" statement was, and how very misleading. I think Foster and especially 64bit, X86 performance compatible Sledgehammer, have a good chance of riding the slow tide of X86 compatibility into the glass rooms to finally displace the mainframes. But Itanium / McKinley don't look like a good bet - why replace boxes the use one weird branch of the software tree (S390 code) with boxes that run another weird branch (Merced code) when you can just keep migrating your X86 platforms to bigger applications (Foster and especially Sledgehammer)? Regards, Dan