The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main as well.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thompson, Steve , SCI TW) writes: > The PCMs from a prior life all had to license patents from IBM and > others. AMDAHL actually has/had patents that IBM had to as I recall. > Then, I think, there were patents owned by NS (National Semi-Conductor), > among others. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#1 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones the legal litigation led to unbundling announcement on 23jun69 ... and starting to charge for application software ... however, the argument was made that because kernel software was required to operate the hardware, it would still be offered for free. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#unbundle for recent post discussing this from slightly different perspective http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#47 Why so little parallelism? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#48 Why so little parallelism? the clone/pcm controllers were somewhat the motivation behind the failed future system project in the early 70s http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys specific reference: http://www.ecole.org/Crisis_and_change_1995_1.htm from above: IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead that the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such a high level of integration that it would be impossible for competitors to follow a compatible niche strategy. However, the project failed because the objectives were too ambitious for the available technology. Many of the ideas that were developed were nevertheless adapted for later generations. Once IBM had acknowledged this failure, it launched its 'box strategy', which called for competitiveness with all the different types of compatible sub-systems. But this proved to be difficult because of IBM's cost structure and its R&D spending, and the strategy only resulted in a partial narrowing of the price gap between IBM and its rivals. ... snip ... some past posts about having helped build clone controller as an undergraduate in the 60s ... and some article blaiming four of us for (some part of) the clone controller market http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm however, the appearance of the clone processors in the 70s ... was somewhat motivation behind starting to charge for kernel software ... and my resource manager got selected to be the guinea pig for kernel software charging ... and i got to spend quite a bit of time with business and pricing people working out the details. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock note, i've in the past conjectured that the future system project may have helped give rise to clone processors. Amdahl gave a seminar at MIT in the early 70s ... and got a lot of questions about his leaving and getting the backing to start his mainframe processor business. He made some statement about even if IBM were to completely walk away from 360/370 (which could be considered a veiled reference to future system project), there was already something like $100b ($200b?) in 360 application software which would keep clone processor business going thru the end of the century. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
