New 3000 emulator project opens tablet offer
April 1, 2010
After more than seven years of pursuit of a hardware replacement to run MPE/iX software, a consortium of systems and architecture firms is ready to unveil the first enterprise solution capable of carrying 3000 computing into the coming decade.
The inspiration for the Corporate CloudPad came from a project far-removed from the 3000's architecture. Tandy Renascimento announced a device which relies on cloud services and non-3000 peripherals and networking to process a COBOL derivative's programs for peer distribution. Renascimento, the CTO of the Godo Group, said the answer to emulation lay in moving off the server foundation of the 3000.
"The community might not be ready for this thinking, but we know they're on the move away from Hewlett-Packard or the 3000, or both," he said in an exclusive shared with the NewsWire. "The key for us was a proprietary processor in a device the market has long discredited. We've tested and proven a pilot to serve enterprise applications through a tablet array."
Developed undercover in a skunkworks that the Godo Group calls Cupertino East, the CloudPad taps the cast-off powers of the Alpha 4 chips, reworked from the Digital designs for the processor model that HP never shipped. Renascimento claims that the powerful HP Development Company overlooked the intellectual property of Alpha 4 to let it slip into public domain. Alpha 4 by itself doesn't make the Cloud Pad viable, however. HPE, integrated with a Nunbase data engine, takes 3000 environments beyond Hewlett-Packard's visions for the vendor's founding business platform.
OpenMPE's community doesn't believe the pilot device is more than a wild misuse of Federal stimulus grant monies. "A recession doesn't make an emulator appear overnight," said former board of directors candidate Hoxie Howard. "You couldn't expect a real business to rely on this kind of information boondoggle. Not even a newspaper."
But in a sometimes-astounding and baffling WebEx demonstration, complete with DimDim streaming video as an adjunct, the Godo Group showed a peer network of massively redundant tablet computers processing for magazine subscriptions and digital catalog orders. Metryco, a Boca Raton clearing house which appears to have acquired operations from Golden Empire Alliances, has converted its HP 3000 Corporate Business Server enterprise to a CloudPad platform. The information company, which includes the Sebold Dispatch and the Sunset Cable Network, plans to take an online shopping system live on April 3.
"We know there's a lot of interest in tablet computer architecture this weekend," said Metryco's CEO Frampton Petros. "CloudPad thinks along these lines using its Systems Attract Programs. SAPs are superior to servers. Since the tablet concept is about to gain a big lift in the world's computer community, we can leverage the trust into the enterprise space. Moving COBOL first written in 1894 to Object-Oriented Ada, via SAP, is only the first step."
Rumors were afoot at presstime of legal action to block the Cloud Pad, driven by a collective of Microsoft, Intel and Hewlett-Packard. In a Twitter tweet that was cut off by the service's 140-character limit, a poster named @burnboom said, "This is unsanctioned use of discarded tech, built to limit pervasive value of 3 corporations It's April 1, 2010, not a new 3000 spring that..."
HP and the OpenMPE were unavailable for comment on the CloudPad, owing to the the onset of the Easter weekend. A Google Voice mailbox message referred inquiries to Mela, Ondernemingen & Canard, an IP law consortium with reputation as patent troll processors.