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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: architectural goals, Byte Addressability And Beyond
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2024 01:26:20 -0000 (UTC)
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On Fri, 31 May 2024 19:44:49 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:

> Back in the last millenium there were a bunch of companies that made
> clones of IBM mainframes. They all failed.

They didn’t “fail” as such. Companies like Amdahl and Wang were able to 
maintain profitable businesses for quite a few years, decades even. And 
then there were other entirely separate companies, like CDC where Seymour 
Cray invented the concept of the “supercomputer”, much to the surprise of 
his upper management who just wanted to sell “business” machines.

All the mainframe companies apart from IBM eventually went out of business 
because the whole mainframe concept is obsolete. The only reason IBM is 
still going is because it was able to muster more marketing clout than all 
its competitors put together. But even that part of its business is in 
decline. The only part of the company currently making money would be its 
Red Hat acquisition. The rest will eventually wither away.