Re: AS/400 -- MIDRANGE-L

    But the car analogy that was given was a completely false representation
of the CPW situation. The analogy said the buyer bought a 150 MPH car but
was artificially governed to only be able to use that sometimes.
    In the CPW situation, the buyer walks in and says, "I'd like a 300
horsepower car, but I'd like 75% of that to be reserved for powering my
generator." Now the guy is driving around and whenever the generator needs
power it is drained off the engine, still leaving him with his 75 HP for
driving.
    But now he notices that other people who just bought generators paid
less than he did for his car/generator! He's now pissed at the auto
manufacturer for charging so much for his car! He starts to rant and
threaten to quit driving altogether and go just use a plain old generator
for his power!

    CPW is a measure of workload being performed. A task done by a terminal
doesn't change in its CPW requirements unless you add more work to be done.
So if a machine is upgraded to support more CPW, it will allow for more work
to be done.



Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net
If you believe that the best technology wins the
marketplace, you haven't been paying attention.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Goodbar, Loyd (AFS-Water Valley)" <LGoodbar@afs.bwauto.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 9:13 AM
Subject: RE: AS/400


> These are some interesting points. Let's go back to the car analogy real
> quick. My Honda Accord has cruise control. Its speedometer maxes at 140,
but
> my cruise control doesn't work past 85.
>
> Or another example. The speedometer in (some car) reads 180, but the
> manufacturer put a limiter chip so I can get only 5000 RPM in 5th gear
> instead of the full 8500 RPM in 5th gear, so my maximum effective speed is
> 150 MPH. In other gears I can approach 8500 RPM without problem.
>
> Let's say the speedometer is the full potential of the AS/400,
> processing-wise (MHz, max CPU, what have you). My cruise control and rev
> limiter are the CFINT interactive governor.
>
> My point is that the AS/400 typically has far more processing capability
> than customers get to use. When I buy a PC (and I know the AS/400 is not a
> PC), there are no real limitations on how I use the processing capability.
> When I buy a car, there is little in the engine preventing me from driving
> 120 + MPH. The CFINT is an artificial restriction on the amount of
> processing power available to traditional interactive applications. On one
> hand, I agree with you, I paid for X interactive CPW, but when the chip
has
> X*3 total CPW, why the "interactive CPW" restriction?
>
> Here's the question for what I don't understand. What exactly does 1 CPW
> represent? If I have a constant number of users, why do I need to upgrade
my
> AS/400? Does it mean my applications are more complex, and a process that
> took 1 CPW a few years ago now takes 3? Or does a single signon get a
fixed
> CPW? How does the AS/400 determine how much "work" an interactive process
> uses?
>
> Loyd


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