[geeks] Careeer shifting

[Brian Hechinger]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2001 at 11:08:05PM -0400, Ken Hansen wrote:
> Mainframes can be sliced up in many ways, including soft (or virtual)
> machines, sharing the common resources of the mainframe, or physically,
> where multiple physical machine images are defined, each of which can be
> running a differnet level of microcode in the CPU. This closely mimics the
> operation of E10K processor division s I understand it...

but a mainframe can do it with only one CPU whereas an e10k needs at least one
CPU per domain.  you can mimic what the e10k can do with a mainframe, but there
is no way an e10k can do everything a mainframe can.  completely different class
of thinking.

> Mainframes did this almost 15 years ago - machines from Amdhal had a
> function called PR/SM (I think was the name)...

no idea about the Amdahl boxes.  grew up an IBM brat (PSUVM)

> Mainframes offer much more than the OS level "multiple machines" you
> mentioned...

mailframes just flat out rule.

-brian (yes, i am a Sun Bigot, although it's hard to remember that some days)