They should have went to IBM or Sun or Cray, who someone similar who had the most expertise in such things. Do you really think Cray wouldn't have jumped through their shorts to help NASA modify UNICOS? All it would have taken is contract dollars. Now instead, we have Cray on the verge of bankruptcy, and releasing products called "Red Storm" just to try to keep up with the free copies.
LOL.. sure as hell they would... for a price. I kinda like the fact that NASA used good old American ingenuity to build their own, using parts and systems no longer in production and taking up space in a warehouse somewhere.
More bang for the buck. OUR tax bucks to be exact.
And hey what are you gonna do.... those whacky scientists and engineers like to improvise, invent, adapt and overcome.
I know, I know, were' not paying them for that kind of thinking by gum. They're supposed to be exploring space and throw our tax money around like its candy.
Oh, and only buy their software from Micro$oft.
Right.
I don't know there GE, in computer years, M$ is getting a little long in the tooth, and all they seem able to do is put a new dress on an aging dog and call it new again. If they're not careful, they may go the way of VMS.
Oh, wait, VMS was a rock solid OS (did clustering too). Bad example...
That statement clearly shows you know nothing about Beowulf and the concepts behind it, despite me having told you more than once. Shut up on the subject and live in your ignorance.
and releasing products called "Red Storm" just to try to keep up with the free copies.
That's called "competition" in case you've never heard of it. BTW, it is highly proprietary, and runs a combination of UNICOS and Linux. As usual, what really sets Red Storm apart is the proprietary scalable system software and extremely high-speed Cray interconnect and I/O technology.