Keeping Old Computers Alive for …

[vassilisprevelakis]

(04-26-2024 08:08 PM)SlideRule Wrote:  Computer architectures, as they are seen by students,
are getting more and more monolithic: few years ago a
student had access to x86 processor on his or her laptop, SPARC
server in the backyard, MIPS and PowerPC on large SMP system,
and Alpha on calculation server. Today, only architectures that
students experience writing program on are x86 64 and possibly
ARM.

Hi,

For the people in my age group :-) the saying "all the world is a VAX" sounds familiar.
But then the 32-microcomputer architectures took over and there was a lot of variety.

Now we have the Intel architecture, the ARM, and more recently the Risc-V.

Not to mention all these crazy GPU designs and other architectures targeted towards AI processing.

So don't worry, students have a lot of architectures to choose from.

What is worrying from my point of view is the networking monoculture.
Even with IPv6 providing some differentiation, networking has essentially standardized in IP.

So I find myself agreeing with the general idea of the abstract (I haven't had access to the paper), but in a different domain.

Vassilis
http://www.series80.org