RE: Trivia: Processor MHz

Jim,

I didn't intend to imply that Unix is MORE capable or better suited to
parallel processing.  Just that it's more widely implemented on the box.

I agree basically with what you said about "Much of what passes for parallel
processing has to be coded into an application anyway."  But in both the
*nix and the mainframe worlds, and the scientific community in general,
they've put a LOT more R & D work into compilers that handle this
automatically.  BTW, I don't claim to know what the current state-of-the-art
is...  I suppose "Blue Gene" and "ASCII White" (whatever the latter is, for
forecasting weather or some such...?)  But it's WAY beyond what OS/400
offers.  They also do a lot of work in the area of multi-THOUSANDS of
parallel processors.

I assume that "Grid computing" is an extension of this.  I haven't seen much
action in the 400 industry on this, either.


But I don't view it so much as the 400 isn't capable, but that this isn't
their primary focus.  The technology will eventually get here, from the
other eServers, same way as Project eLiza was pumped into the other
platforms from the iSeries Division...  (Another advantage the Server Group
has, over it's competitors...!)


jt

| -----Original Message-----
| From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
| [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Jim Damato
| Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 2:42 PM
| To: 'midrange-l@midrange.com'
| Subject: RE: Trivia: Processor MHz
| Importance: High
|
|
| > jt:
| >That's one area the *nix (and maybe PASE?) just kicks the crap out of
| >OS/400...  Makes little sense to me, because one of OS/400s greatest
| >strengths is near-linear performance gains on multi-processors.
| IOW, they
| >should be able to throw a dozen of the oldest processors they
| can make, and
| >get some spectacular price/performance, AFAIK, if they took advantage of
| >this more.
|
| What is it about Unix that makes you think it's better suited to parallel
| processing?  OS/400 and Unix are both capable of supporting threads or
| multiple "batch" streams.  SMP for UDB/400 and Parallel Query for
| Oracle are
| both add-ons.  In my opinion each environment is equally capable of
| exploiting multiple processor resources.  Much of what passes for parallel
| processing has to be coded into an application anyway.
|
| -Jim
|
| James P. Damato
| Manager - Technical Administration
| Dollar General Corporation
| <mailto:jdamato@dollargeneral.com>
|
|
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