I was specifying large systems for banking applications in the late 90s, and we never installed Linux anywhere. It was all Solaris/HP-UX/AIX (and mainly Solaris!). I actually had Linux running at home at the time, so I was totally aware of it's capability, but there's no way i'd have seen it displacing the Unixes in the sort of timeframe that happened with the Top500.
So, i'd probably conclude that the 'out of nowhere' rise of RISC-V is a possibility. I'd say 5 years sounds quick, but 10 years is a long time. But hey, i'll be able to look back on this comment and reflect what an idiot I was about this in a few years time :)
The Top 500 supercomputer OS mix is maybe the easiest example to use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix#/media/File:Op...
I was specifying large systems for banking applications in the late 90s, and we never installed Linux anywhere. It was all Solaris/HP-UX/AIX (and mainly Solaris!). I actually had Linux running at home at the time, so I was totally aware of it's capability, but there's no way i'd have seen it displacing the Unixes in the sort of timeframe that happened with the Top500.
So, i'd probably conclude that the 'out of nowhere' rise of RISC-V is a possibility. I'd say 5 years sounds quick, but 10 years is a long time. But hey, i'll be able to look back on this comment and reflect what an idiot I was about this in a few years time :)