I don't have time to look at the included video right now. But based on the excerpted points, I think for modern SOCs there is a good point to all of this. Modern computers are not just a fancy VAX, but they're not truly conceptually like a mainframe either.
The key with a mainframe architecture is abstraction between the components, separate memory spaces, no memory mapped IO, etc.
I'd also say that the Unix (Linux) we use today has more to do with UNIX/32V and 3BSD, than with the Unix that ran on either the PDP-7 or even the PDP-11.
Multiprocessing came into Unix fairly early too, within a year or two of the introduction of the VAX. All that effort was rolled into SysV later.
This disregards the fact that most of the interesting peripherals in the VAX were also computers running firmware.
The distinctions are almost entirely arbitrary, and this is really just another "no true Scotsman" argument, with some "free software" angst tossed in for good measure.
> The key with a mainframe architecture is abstraction between the components, separate memory spaces, no memory mapped IO, etc.
That's what the video was about. That the every component is in a little box with its own OS that communicates via some defined ABI with the box that happens to run Linux that runs your apps.
The key with a mainframe architecture is abstraction between the components, separate memory spaces, no memory mapped IO, etc.
I'd also say that the Unix (Linux) we use today has more to do with UNIX/32V and 3BSD, than with the Unix that ran on either the PDP-7 or even the PDP-11.
Multiprocessing came into Unix fairly early too, within a year or two of the introduction of the VAX. All that effort was rolled into SysV later.