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Actually the opposite is true.Actually the opposite is true.Posted Oct 21, 2005 1:37 UTC (Fri) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)In reply to: Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet) by nix Parent article: Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet)
> most accounting calculations parallelize really, really badly:
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Actually the opposite is true. Posted Oct 21, 2005 12:34 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Makes sense.
So the questions that remains is:
1. Does it make sense to go to clustering for these applications when cheap muticore computers (4-8 cores) are getting cheaper, and 16+ cpu computers are more effective then they ever been before.
Mainframes I know are very good for certain types of data. Big 32+ cpu computers are better for others. Clusters are good for number crunching but are lousy for other things big iron and mainframes are good for, that's why IBM and sun still is able to sell million dollar boxes.
and if clustering for regular business makes sense, then..
2. Does it make more sense to rewrite all their applications to run on Linux or Windows? Since legacy windows apps won't work well on clusters, which platform is more likely to attract new developers/developments?
Peoplesoft/Oracle and the like are liking Linux (or so it seems to me) a lot more lately now that MS wants to compete with their own products. It's tough to fight a competing software vendor who owns the platform your software has to run on.
There still is a lot of noise about 'grid computing' and Linux is at the center of that. Whatever the hell 'grid computing' is suppose to mean.
But I won't dismiss the million billion dollars (just a rough estimate) MS is willing to throw at the problem.
Actually the opposite is true. Posted Oct 27, 2005 16:15 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] The problem is not: "Does it makes sense?" but "Can it be financed?"
The last bank that I worked for had 40,000 mainframe programs alone for the share trading to end-customers (don't know the correct English term, equity management?). Rewriting these programs with the same functionality is just not worth the investment.
Since few specifications are available, rewrite them for new functionality is difficult as well. These programs literally evolved over decades and added all the special cases that must be handled. New software first have to re-discover all these special cases and re-program them anew. And believe me, it's no easy thing to analyse a twenty-year old COBOL program that has been actively changed all this time.
Oh yes, this bank tried that and failed. In the end, they had to write off 500 million Euros for the cancelled project. (And that was hard cash, not stock money.) It is a lesson for all those who think they can rewrite two decades of software assets on a whim.
Concerning compute clusters: These are not relevant for this realm. Most of the time, these programs don't compute, not even addition or multiplication. They just move data from one place to another, or update data. Performance advantages in database technology is the key to get them faster, not parallelization of applications.
Cheers, Joachim
Actually the opposite is true. Posted Oct 29, 2005 15:55 UTC (Sat) by rwmj (guest, #5474) [Link] You think for 500 bazillion euros they could have written anemulator with JIT optimizations. That would have allowed them to migrate the applications themselves slowly - or even not at all - but still have them run on newer, cheaper hardware.
I think the problem here is probably the banks themselves, who
Rich.
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