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  • GUESS - Generic User Environment of a Small System

    From Tomas Slavotinek@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 30 21:51:57 2022
    Chet Heath's idea for a cluster computer built from multiple
    peer-to-peer busmaster MCA adapters. Each card was essentially a
    single-board computer with its own CPU, memory, and user I/O...

    He talks about it in the Micro Channel Architecture Handbook (pages
    317-325):
    https://archive.org/details/microchannelarch00heat/page/316/mode/2up

    The concept was first demonstrated at Comdex 1989, but apparently IBM
    wasn't interested in making an actual product out of it.

    When Chet left IBM in 2000 he took the idea with him (with IBM's
    blessing) and founded OmniCluster: https://ardent-tool.com/docs/web/Forbes_2001_04_IBM_Wild_Duck_Flies_South.html

    The product they shipped was for the PCI bus, but the idea remained the
    same...

    (It was Louis who sparked this discussion, but he is currently
    experiencing some... technical difficulties. He should be back soon-ish.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Tomas Slavotinek@21:1/5 to Tomas Slavotinek on Tue Aug 9 01:09:21 2022
    https://ardent-tool.com/tech/GUESS.html

    HTMLized by Louis. (Yes, he's back!)

    On 30.06.2022 21:51, Tomas Slavotinek wrote:
    Chet Heath's idea for a cluster computer built from multiple
    peer-to-peer busmaster MCA adapters. Each card was essentially a
    single-board computer with its own CPU, memory, and user I/O...

    He talks about it in the Micro Channel Architecture Handbook (pages
    317-325): https://archive.org/details/microchannelarch00heat/page/316/mode/2up

    The concept was first demonstrated at Comdex 1989, but apparently IBM
    wasn't interested in making an actual product out of it.

    When Chet left IBM in 2000 he took the idea with him (with IBM's
    blessing) and founded OmniCluster: https://ardent-tool.com/docs/web/Forbes_2001_04_IBM_Wild_Duck_Flies_South.html


    The product they shipped was for the PCI bus, but the idea remained the same...

    (It was Louis who sparked this discussion, but he is currently
    experiencing some... technical difficulties. He should be back soon-ish.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From schimmi@21:1/5 to Tomas Slavotinek on Tue Aug 9 13:35:55 2022
    I think they (IBM) already had a solution for this back then - Mainframes and Terminals and since 1988 AS/400 in multiuser environments. Would be nice to know how the storage was attached to these SBCs?

    (Yes, he's back!)
    Yeah!

    Tomas Slavotinek schrieb am Dienstag, 9. August 2022 um 01:09:24 UTC+2:
    https://ardent-tool.com/tech/GUESS.html

    HTMLized by Louis. (Yes, he's back!)
    On 30.06.2022 21:51, Tomas Slavotinek wrote:
    Chet Heath's idea for a cluster computer built from multiple
    peer-to-peer busmaster MCA adapters. Each card was essentially a single-board computer with its own CPU, memory, and user I/O...

    He talks about it in the Micro Channel Architecture Handbook (pages 317-325): https://archive.org/details/microchannelarch00heat/page/316/mode/2up

    The concept was first demonstrated at Comdex 1989, but apparently IBM wasn't interested in making an actual product out of it.

    When Chet left IBM in 2000 he took the idea with him (with IBM's
    blessing) and founded OmniCluster: https://ardent-tool.com/docs/web/Forbes_2001_04_IBM_Wild_Duck_Flies_South.html


    The product they shipped was for the PCI bus, but the idea remained the same...

    (It was Louis who sparked this discussion, but he is currently
    experiencing some... technical difficulties. He should be back soon-ish.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Tomas Slavotinek@21:1/5 to schimmi on Wed Aug 10 00:48:00 2022
    Yeah I also think it probably didn't fit into their product stack very well.

    The storage was shared. I imaging it would be a real bottleneck in an environment with multiple GUESS cards running storage intensive tasks.

    The PCI-based SlotServer card from OmniCluster (Chet's company)
    supported both - shared and local storage.

    On 09.08.2022 22:35, schimmi wrote:
    I think they (IBM) already had a solution for this back then - Mainframes and Terminals and since 1988 AS/400 in multiuser environments. Would be nice to know how the storage was attached to these SBCs?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)