Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!i2pn.org!i2pn2.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Date: Tue, 20 May 2025 16:59:37 +0000 Organization: Rocksolid Light Message-ID: References: <100apst$hsll$1@dont-email.me> <100bs7t$rna2$1@dont-email.me> <20250518182303.00003542@yahoo.com> <76948d869e78f8cb511809bd159008fd@www.novabbs.com> <100e352$1d61i$3@dont-email.me> <20250519165549.000026d1@yahoo.com> <100ggin$1sbnn$2@dont-email.me> <20250520134518.0000531e@yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: i2pn2.org; logging-data="1191384"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@i2pn2.org"; posting-account="o5SwNDfMfYu6Mv4wwLiW6e/jbA93UAdzFodw5PEa6eU"; User-Agent: Rocksolid Light X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 X-Rslight-Posting-User: cb29269328a20fe5719ed6a1c397e21f651bda71 X-Rslight-Site: $2y$10$Vso/QAq2.3PJx6QUOnutburcy8UYZriKnqbGxR8FuyX9AoXRxnfsC On Tue, 20 May 2025 10:45:18 +0000, Michael S wrote: > On Mon, 19 May 2025 23:58:16 -0000 (UTC) > Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > >> On Mon, 19 May 2025 16:55:49 +0300, Michael S wrote: >> >>> On Mon, 19 May 2025 01:56:50 -0000 (UTC) >>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: >>> >>>> They were orders of magnitude faster than anything from IBM. >>> >>> That sounds like exaggeration. >> >> Thomas Watson Jr, boss of IBM, sent out the following memo after the >> 1963 Business Week feature on CDC and the forthcoming 6600: >> >> Last week Control Data had a press conference during which they >> officially announced their 6600 system. I understand that in the >> laboratory developing this system there are only 34 people, >> including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are >> programmers, and only one person has a Ph.D., a relatively junior >> programmer. Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast >> development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our >> industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the >> world’s most powerful computer. >> > > At time of introduction CDC 6600 was undoubtedly much faster both than > older [more expensive] IBM 7030 and than contemporary [significantly > less expensive] S/360 Model 50. But it was not "orders of magnitude > faster". Perhaps a full binary order of magnitude:: 2× > Not even one order of magnitude faster, except, may be, vs > Model 50 in artificial very memory-light floating-point intensive > scenarios. > High end S/360 (Model 65) came about half a year later. I would imagine > that for non-floating-point code it had about the same speed as 6600. > Or not, I don't really know. > >>>> They pioneered the very concept of a “supercomputer”. >>>> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030_Stretch >> >> Let’s just say, the 7030 was just the start of a long IBM tradition >> of over-promising and under-delivering. > > It is true that IBM was over-promising und under-delivering with 7030. > It does not change the fact that it was called "supercomputer" and that > despite under-delivery until introduction of 6600 it was the fastest > computer in the world.