Standalone single machine... maybe for a non essential system.
Anything where they really want to make sure it doesn't go down
or lose data, they get big... Fast. Think about it... To have no
single point of failure you need double of everything from power
supply to CPU to main board. Clusters designed for heavy load you
could be talking dozens. Redundant storage OS usually a separate
box or two at least, particularly if it needs to upgradeable and
maintainable without going down.
Then you need power SOURCES. Ideally at least two separate feeds
but likely a big UPS battery bank also with redundancy and
probably a manual generator or two on top of all that...
I could buy the machine itself being a shoebox... But dozens of
shoe boxes is more like it. with a bunch of redundancy and fall
safe assumed, I still don't find Traveller mainframe conceptions
entirely out of place... At least for a crucial application like
a starship
---
from my T989
DEREK STANLEY wrote:
Sadly at the rate we're going that computer would have been the
size of a shoe box. Its much less impressive than a great
cavernous hall filled with random flashing lights and the humm of
electricity.
While I have yet to look it up someone told me that the phone in
my hand has more processing power than all of NASA did when they
put a man on the moon. If true I find that at once aweinspiring
and terrifying.
Derek StanleySent from my iPhone...
On 2012-06-16, at 7:14, "Antony Farrell" <
<> > wrote:
The one that got me was the Virus that infected the Reference
network which
had at least one mainframe dedicated to every world in the
Imperium, talk
about a super god complex.
Antony