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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (446587)	1/10/2009 10:17:24 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574565

Who do you think invented hard drives, floppy drives, out of order processing, virtual memory, virtualization and pretty much everything that makes what we think of a computer a computer? I totally agree. Never suggested otherwise. About the only thing that IBM hasn't had much influence on has been GUIs. Again, I'm in total agreement. IBM also invented the Assembler, PL/I, and damned near everything that was in between in the area of software. It invented operating systems, and, by-god, the keypunch machine. PCs have just been accreting things that have existed on larger machines for a while. Well, early on this was definitely the case. The Winchester Disk is an example. But, to what extent has IBM capitalized on their inventions for purposes building PCs? Everyone would agree, for example, that in the 70s & 80s IBM was the leading developer of new Hard Drive technologies. Yet, as a hardware company, they failed to recognize that building hard drives for PCs could be a great business for them. Instead, their technologies were co-opted by other companies, some of whom have made pretty good money over the years. In the PC business IBM lacked the ability to think outside the "IBM Box" and recognize the market for other than the large systems which they pioneered. So, while Xerox PARC was developing Ethernet and DEC developing DecNet (both superior to IBM protocols) the protocols we routinely use today came from where? The problem that IBM ran into was the PC market had most of the profit driven from it. What caused this? IBM's failure to recognize what the PC would become, which caused them to foolishly enter into a deal with Bill Gates that virtually assured massive competition within a short period of time. Make no mistake -- had IBM "known" what they had in the PC, this would never have happened. In the biggest single blunder of the computer revolution, IBM let the golden goose escape. PC-DOS was not a great find, even in the day. IBM had the resources to develop it internally in a very short period of time. But they failed to respect the potential for the PC, and thus handed the software rights over to Gates unnecessarily. If you look at the key components of today's computers -- - Xerox PARC, AAPL & MSFT are responsible for the User Interface, in its totality (IBM made no significant contribution). - Xerox PARC is ultimately responsible for the communications protocol we use to connect it to other computers. - IBM Hard drive technology was responsible for the fundamental concept of the Winchester Disk, but that is a long way removed from the PC hard disks of today. Rodime currently holds some of the key patents for today's PC disk technologies. While IBM once was consistently breaking its own records for storage densities, today, others are doing that work. - Processors. Well, I don't have to say much about that. Once again, IBM has had a role at times, but INTC owns it. - Memory. Depends on the type, but Flash memory is increasingly important and will soon begin to replace hard drives in most PC applications. Toshiba, not IBM. Obviously, 50 years ago, IBM was the key developer of just about every new computer technology. And it would have been unreasonable to think that IBM would maintain that dominance. But the PC was totally a lost concept on IBM. PCs, not mainframes, are what MADE the computer revolution, and to IBM it was a mere afterthought. The further we get from the "fork" where other companies got involved, the less relevant IBM's technology becomes. EVEN THOUGH they could have owned the entire industry, they could not conceive of how big it would be. This is like McDonalds overlooking the Hamburger as a revenue source because they have great french fries.