4 Nov
2011
4 Nov
'11
6:33 a.m.
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
First of all, they're quite fast for being so small; often the fastest
way to run VAX binaries without pulling gobs of electricity. Second, a lot
of gov't agencies use them for some very specific software that only runs
on VAXen. (the US Gov't is FULL of VAXen, specifically in defense sector)
-Dave
I remember an article from the 80s - I think from Byte or Compute - going
over the very rough architecture of the DoD's computer systems. It was
pretty much all DEC. Mention was made of an entire datacenter of 11/785s
with maxxed-out memory that acted as a disk cache for the storage cluster.
That's pretty much all it did - a whole cluster dedicated to caching disk
access.
I'd imagine that even the DoD would balk at the cost of replacing a
buildout like that with a new architecture.