Disclosure

Peter Glaskowsky has no business relations, investments or affiliations with subjects he covers except where noted in each post.

[jgt10]

Peter,

I worked for 6 years at Amdahl on their Unix product. As such I was exposed to the mainframe MP concepts and operation. My work was technical support. I had a few cases that dealt with MP issues in the kernel. I also had a boss that had been a field engineer and loved to give us glimpses into the hardware and machine OS concepts and operation. (The glass house/PC equivalent layer is the BIOS.)

I've been skeptical of the glass house efforts at MP. Mainly because they seem to be saying, "Hey, look what we created!" and seem to have no knowledge of the 3 decades of mainframe work at MP. I sometimes wonder if they avoid mentioning mainframe concepts or ideas for fear of being seen as a kin to mainframes.

Is my bias blinding me to a deeper aspect of the glass/house/PC market that actually does understand what mainframes achieved and is using that experience to advance the PC market?

Or am I correct in that the PC market is re-inventing the wheel out of ignorance or some belief that they are smarter or that the concepts and technology don't apply to PCs?

Or is it a more likely a complex combination of the two extremes and intermediate points?

I'd appreciate either a personal response or an analysis on this view.

Thanks!

JGT
John G. Thompson