I believe IBM produced a pc with a 370 to run VM on a PC. Merrill Lynch had one. Somewhere in the late 80's I believe.
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:52 AM, Timothy Sipples1 <sipp...@sg.ibm.com> wrote: > Yes, there are organizations that use zEnterprise servers for "heavy > numeric computation." Like decimal floating point. Cryptography is another > excellent example. And you can buy optional CryptoExpress adapters if you > want to augment the excellent capabilities found in every machine. You can > also buy the optional zBladeCenter Extension (zBX) if you want to add > DataPower accelerators, Power blades, and/or X86 blades. You can also add > an optional IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator, to boost many types of DB2 > queries. So we're way ahead of you, John. ;-) > > I think the simple answer is that it depends what you optimize for in > designing a server processor (or complex). But IBM has broken a lot of > "rules" already about which server should do what, and I predict more rules > will be broken. > > With respect to the 370-on-a-chip, IBM sort of did that with the 1975 > introduction of the IBM 5100 Portable Computer starting at $8,975 (1975 > dollars), although it was for a relatively narrow initial purpose (to get > APL running). The 5100 sold reasonably well from what I've read, but I > think there were three basic problems which prevented it from becoming a > blockbuster: > > 1. The price was not low enough for mass market appeal. (Apple had a > similar problem with the Lisa in the early 1980s.) > > 2. The software selection didn't exactly hit the mark, although it was a > good try for the time. (IBM learned the value of software somewhat later in > its evolution but not in time for the 1981 IBM PC.) > > 3. It probably didn't have the right third party marketing and distribution > channels. With some very notable exceptions, like typewriters, at that time > IBM would have had some challenges with this type of product. > > Keep in mind that for 1975 this was absolutely amazing technology, but > amazing technology required some expense. Being early is pricey. If the > 5100 debuted in, say, 1977 or 1978, it would have still been well timed but > could have dramatically reduced the chip and board count. I also think the > small built-in monitor could have been sacrified (at least as an option) in > favor of a display port of some kind -- ideally RF for TV hookup. And IBM > might have gone with a diskette drive for storage -- the 5100 was too early > for the 5.25 inch drive, which debuted in 1976. Finally, if IBM had > provided a little more guidance on the 370 subset instruction set they > implemented, software developers could have taken over from there. > > So I think the 5100 could have been a nice 5110 by tweaking the recipe a > bit. But history didn't happen that way. > > IBM had some success with the System/4 Pi avionics processors which are > descended from System/360. > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Timothy Sipples > Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore) > E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- George Henke (C) 845 401 5614 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
