On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 11:01:22AM -0400, Michael Stone wrote:
> I agree...but...they still could be. Isn't that exactly what the people who
> were writting mainframe applications a few yars ago said? :)
>
> "Nah this system wont be in use past 93 forget about 99"
Superficially, yes, they look similar, but there are major differences.
The 32-bit hardware that Linux currently runs on does not have a 40-year
expected physical lifetime. I strongly suspect that the only functioning
PCs (and even Sparcs, etc.) in 2038 will be in museums, and perhaps in
hobbyist's basements, like antique record players and radios are today.
A sizable fraction of them don't even have hardware clocks that can handle
Y2K.
Mainframes are designed for high reliability and availability, and have
been engineered to an entirely different standard than consumer computers.
In addition, the kind of software that still runs on mainframes tends to
be thoroughly-debugged financial software, the kind that's frequently
considered "too risky" to migrate. Unix servers, by their very
open-standards nature, tend to be used in the capacity of file servers,
print servers, routers, web servers, and so on. They can be easily, even
gradually, replaced by new hardware and software. (Look at how good a job
Linux does replacing an NT file server.)
Assuming Unix ever *does* take on a sizeable chunk of the utterly
mission-critical jobs currently done by mainframes, it will be after
64-bit processors are in common use, and the hardware around that
processor will look very different from the PC's we use today.
Sincerely,
Ray Ingles (248) 377-7735 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Anagrams of "digital_nervous_system", Microsoft's new slogan:
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