On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 13:43:40 EDT, "Jay R. Ashworth" said:
And the world demand for computers might someday approach 100?
To be fair to TJ Watson, please note that IBM was *already* engaged in the production and sales of automated tabulating equipment, and when reading his comment *in historical context*, it's pretty obvious that what he *meant* by "computer" was "high end machine that only a few could afford". In other words, what we now call a "supercomputer". And sure enough, looking at the current Top500, http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2005&M=06 we see that only 6 sites have bought 20Tflops+ systems, but 19 are 10Tflop+, and there's a *huge* pool of very similar smaller systems down in positions 300-500. And this shape has remained remarkably consistent - anywhere from 3-7 systems that are *way* out in the lead, a second string of several dozen smaller, and a huge pool of lower-end machines. So TJ was totally right - at any given time, there's only 5-6 sites willing and able to buy that very top-end box....