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From: Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Chipsandcheese article on the CDC6600
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 12:38:21 +0300
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On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:20:46 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:08:27 +0300, Michael S wrote:
> 
> > At the end, the influence of 6600 on computers we use today is
> > close to zero.  
> 
> He pioneered pipelining 

It (6600), not he (Seymour).
No, it didn't.
If instead of 'it' we'd talk about 'he' then the first Cray-Thornton
pipelined computer is 7600. But by then pipelining was hardly new.
7600 can be arguably credited for  "pipelining done right", but not as
a pioneer in that area.

> and multiple function units. 

Multiple functional units existed before. The special thing about 6600
was that it had ALOT of them. Having a lot of non-pipelined functional
units after 1-wide or even 2 or 3-wide front end sounds like
architectural dead end.

> He went on to
> pioneer vector processing (long vectors, not the short-vector SIMD
> stuff that infests CPU designs today). 

I am talking about 6600, the computer, not Seymour Cray, the person, or
Cray-Thornton, the team.
Cray, the person was innovative and influential.
6600, the computer was innovative and not influential in the long run.

> He was always very
> conservative in the fabrication technologies he adopted, but he was
> brilliant at pushing them to their limits.