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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the There's-nothiing-new-under-the-sun? dept.

http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Eternal_Mainframe.html

In the computer industry, the Wheel of Reincarnation is a pattern whereby specialized hardware gets spun out from the "main" system, becomes more powerful, then gets folded back into the main system. As the linked Jargon File entry points out, several generations of this effect have been observed in graphics and floating-point coprocessors.

In this essay, I note an analogous pattern taking place, not in peripherals of a computing platform, but in the most basic kinds of "computing platform." And this pattern is being driven as much by the desire for "freedom" as by any technical consideration.

"Revolution" has many definitions. From the looks of this, I'd say "going around in circles" comes closest to applying...

-Richard M. Hartman

A funny thing happened on the way to the future. The mainframe outlasted its replacements.

[Ed. Note: This story submission was my first exposure to the linked essay. Though dated from 2013, I found the essay eminently readable as well as making insightful observations of how dramatically the concepts and capabilities of mainframes have persisted for so many years. --martyb[


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:11PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:11PM (#895170) Journal

    Except at this point IBM mainframes are about the size of a refrigerator.

    Ah yes, the portable mainframe.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:36PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:36PM (#895193)

    Yes! As/400 P2. Size of a laptop!

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday September 17 2019, @07:30PM

      by driverless (4770) on Tuesday September 17 2019, @07:30PM (#895334)

      Not a laptop, a flattop.

      Friend of mine worked with an IBM laptop mainframe emulator but he called it "the flattop" because it was a laptop the size of an aircraft carrier. Took him several days to find a backpack large enough to carry it around in.