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Aucbvax.2377 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works Mon Jul 20 07:11:37 1981 Re: Configuration >From Crocker@USC-ISIF Mon Jul 20 06:49:33 1981 Ben,

I don't think it's a fair reading of the present situation to suggest that computer centers are "going away" in favor of personal workstations. A better view is that the computer center is becoming distributed and more easily incremented.

A lot of this is dependent on the specific cost of providing service in any given technology. Today's costs make it relatively cheap to provide a noticeable amount of computing power to each person in the form of an individual workstation. This means that the cost of separate packaging is less than the cost of multiplexing several users onto the same (large) machine. It's quite possible for this to shift back the other way, though not likely, in my opinion.

Several things do remain centralized, and properly so:

a) file servers, high-quality printer/plotters, long distance communication;

b) maintenance;

c) system development (hardware and software).

Your scenario of using a service in Chicago with overnight air service is not only reasonable but entirely usual. There are indeed services that are expensive enough to absorb the cost of long-distance delivery. Various forms of fancy printing, as you mentioned, is one; transcriptions of stenographic tapes is another. I'm sure there are others.

Getting back to individual workstations, my own view is they offer one big plus and one important trap. The big plus is that the economics of adding a new user to "the system" is much clearer. The classical time-sharing environment essen- tially forces overloading of the machine, and we commonly see environments where only the trivial tasks can be done during the day and the heavy-duty tasks are delayed until evenings or weekends. Unfortunately, it's these heavy-duty tasks that are the reason for the facility and the people in the first place. (Yes, I know this can be seen as a straight case of mismanagement. Nonetheless, it's where things are.) With computation tied to terminals, it becomes essentially impossible to add people without adding capacity. (There's always the possibility of "sharing" workstations. This may be useful in some cases, but it will be clear to all that when a person does not have access to the workstation, he does not have access to anything. Compare with today's situation where everyone has a terminal, but that doesn't guarantee access to anything substantive at all.)

The trap in all this is there is a far sharper limit on the size of the task that can be carried out with a workstation. A lot of important tasks use more of the cetral facility than the nominal capacity that is being doled out in workstations. That will mean that transition from a small task fitting on a workstation to a larger task that requires a different machine will be relatively painful.

Steve -------

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