Real Time

In computer speak, real-time is 'live, as its happening'. A real-time display shows you whats happening at the same time aas you watch it.

The problem with real-time displays is that they use resources, and the more you ask them to do, and the faster you ask them to do it, the more resources they use. No free lunch, as Milton Friedman once remarked. If you want information to be processed, you're going to have to pay the freight. If you want that processing to occur right now, real-time, it's going to have to be a fast freight. And if you want that processing to include lots of details, it might have to be a bullet train.

We, however, don't do that.

In our company, we used what is probably the most sophisticated real-time display system available on the market. It is driven by technology that was first designed in the 1960s, and though its been upgraded since then, the upgrades are more structural than procedural. That is, where it used to tell you how busy a direct-access storage unit was, now it tells you how busy, who's using it, what the rate is, how busy the feeding channels are. What it doesn't do is what I think of as HAL9000 mode.

(CPU utilization over threshold. Engage H9K diagnostic mode. Show historical CPU utilization by fifteen minute interval over prior two hours; for plus/minus two fifteen minute intervals for this time of day over prior six working days; for plus/minus two fifteen minute intervals for this time of day for prior six same-day-of week. Forecast CPU utilization next one hour based on current and historical trend. Perform same displays for response time by transaction. Include outlier display.)

This product, however, doesn't do that. It's possible, its within the grasp of the technology, but to do so would be more than the market would pay for, more processor power and dedicated storage than could be justified for anything but a shuttle launch. It'd be a 454 cubic inch engine in a go-kart, a sumo wrestler on the other side of the see-saw, Steven Hawking helping you with your kid's math homework. It would be massive overkill, seriously underutilized for 98% of the day, impossible to cost-justify.

What it would be, though, is cool. Very cool.

And real-time? Heck, it'd be telepathic.