Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: The joy of RISC Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2024 15:39:23 -1000 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 45 Message-ID: <87wmirth9w.fsf@localhost> References: <36KdnVlGJu9VLW77nZ2dnZfqn_qdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <971448126.749088380.092448.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <59CJO.19674$MoU3.15170@fx36.iad> <3hOdnWpQ649QMGr7nZ2dnZfqnPidnZ2d@earthlink.com> <1smdnSjX3YoxgWf7nZ2dnZfqn_idnZ2d@earthlink.com> <1297730607.749420765.030433.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <871q0zmxjy.fsf@localhost> <871q0zv1sd.fsf@localhost> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2024 03:39:29 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="825bc41c5e4d34394cd4d62590ef5c63"; logging-data="3105361"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX188HFQjkyHjW5e0ImjWQZ+NAifKCQ4klZU=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:HuVlziz2nio1w3J1+UBWKAlA7Dw= sha1:sz7fbp1p3xxUbiTKWWaZckTABVQ= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:227385 comp.os.linux.misc:58888 Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes: > That was certainly a much more fruitful effort. IBM’s attempt to turn ROMP > into an actual product may have been an embarrassment (the RT PC), but > they more than redeemed themselves with the later POWER line, which > remains a performance leader to this day. ROMP was originally targeted to be DISPLAYWRITER follow-on, written in PL.8 and running cp.r ... when that was canceled (market moving to personal computing), they decided to pivot to the UNIX workstation market and got the company that had done AT&T Unix port to IBM/PC for PC/IX ... to do one for ROMP ... some claim they had 200 PL.8 programmers and decided to use them to implement a ROMP abstract virtual machine and tell the company doing AIX that it would be much faster and easier to do it to VM, than to the bare hardware. However, there was the IBM Palo Alto group doing UCB BSD port to 370 that got redirected to do BSD port to the (bare hardware) ROMP instead (in much less time and resources than either the abstract virtual machine or the AIX effort) as "AOS". Late 80s, my wife and I got the HA/6000 project, originally for the NYTimes to move their newspaper system (ATEX) off VAXCluster to RS/6000. I rename it HA/CMP when I start doing scientific/technical cluster scale-up with national labs and commercial cluster scale-up with RDBMS vendors (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Ingres that had VAXCluster support in same source base with UNIX). Then the executive we reported to went over to head up Somerset (AIM; apple, ibm, motorola; single-chip RISC) Early Jan92 in meeting with Oracle CEO, AWD/Hester tells Ellison we would have 16-system clusters by mid92 and 128-system clusters by ye92, however by end jan92, cluster scale-up was transferred for announce as IBM supercomputer (for technical/scientific *ONLY*) and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four systems (we leave IBM a few months later). There had been complaints by commercial mainframe possibly contributing to the decision: 1993: eight processor ES/9000-982 : 408MIPS, 51MIPS/processor 1993: RS6000/990 : 126MIPS; 16-system: 2BIPS/2016MIPs, 128-system: 16BIPS/16,128MIPS -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970