"AT&T to resell Pyramid computers" (for real)

[Brian Kantor]

Good Grief!  If the 3B4000 requires as much or more tuning as that to
serve as a general purpose computer, I might as well buy an IBM 370 and
heat the building with it as well.

Perhaps in an environment where each terminal/user is going to do
precisely ONE kind of application all the time every day, you could
claim that a tuned machine is going to support lots of users.

But in a university environment where the mix of tasks changes so
wildly that no one can predict what will be running next, there is NO
WAY to tune a machine to optimize performance of one kind of task
without sacrificing some generality and the performance of all other
kinds of tasks.

What you need is raw frothing power.  Or honest marketing that will
tell me that my 42Q1000 isn't going to really be powerful enough to
handle more than 8 to 10 users when 5 of them are using vi, three are
running troff, and two are compiling modula programs.

There's a big difference between a computer that can run the accounting
department of a company and one that can support computer science
students developing programs, starting with the way the thing handles
job mixes and ending with the utilities provided.

Computer manufacturers have to decide which market they're aiming for.
More importantly, they have to tell their customers which environment
their computers are optimized for and what its performance in that and
other environments is going to be.  Until that happens, you're going to
have large hunks of iron that get returned to the vendor leaving lots
and lots of ill-will behind them.

Diogenes, where is your lamp?
					- Brian