Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #218547

Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952

From	Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Newsgroups	alt.folklore.computers
Subject	Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952
Date	2021-07-27 18:12 -1000
Organization	Wheeler&Wheeler
Message-ID	<87wnpbnkj8.fsf@localhost> (permalink)
References	<92412095-9c81-46cc-87cb-f5d9c00e2581n@googlegroups.com> <sd7u91$1p0u$1@gal.iecc.com> <933c7f28-a120-4f18-ba8c-79f301438224n@googlegroups.com>

Show all headers | View raw

undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> writes:
> Second, both the SABRE host and S/360-OS had to load in various
> modules on demand, execute them, and then release them.  Both had
> to handle multiple modules running simultaneous, with protection
> and control against overlapping memory and I/O demands.  All
> this is complex as well as new.

Lots of OS/360 had multiple module loads for functions (pieces split
into little tiny pieces in order to operate on smaller machienes)
... some of the absolute worst was file open/close SVCs which was
fragmened into 2k modules. It was one of the reasons the CICS (fast
transaction processing) did a whole lot of work at startup, obtaining
resources and doing file opens ... and then while running ... making use
of as little of os/360 services as possible. This included storage
allocation ... this old post (originally bit.listserv.ibm-main) where I
had been asked to track down the decision to move all 370s to virtual
memory ... aka OS/360 storage management was so horrible that region
requests typically had to be four times larger than actually used (and
for longer running applications, like CICS, things like storage
fragmentation increased the longer they were running).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73

from response (included in the above):

Note to Lynn - I have always given zzzzz the credit for turning Bob
Evans around. For reasons unknown to me, the TSO group had the flip
charts and wallboard zzzzz used. The clincher was the ability to run 16
initiators simultaneously on a 1 megabyte system, taking advantage of
the fact that MVT normally used only 25% of the memory in a
partition. The resulting throughput gain (compared to real hardware) was
substantial enough to convince Bob. It helped that Tom Simpson and Bob
Crabtree had hosted an MFT II system TSS-Style and shown similar
performance gains. Of course, since CP67 was a pickup group they weren't
considered and we had the OS/VS adventure instead.

... snip ...

trivia: within year after taking two semester hr intro to
computers/fortran, the univ. hired me responsible for os/360 systems.
Sometime later, univ. library got an ONR (office of naval research) grant
to do online catalog ... part of the money went for a IBM 2321
(datacell) ... the univ. library was also selected to beta test site for
original CICS product ... one of the early bugs I had to diagnose
... was there were some (undocumented) hardcoded BDAM file operations
and the univ had created BDAM files with different options ... and CICS
would fail on startup.

past CICS/BDAM posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

more CICS lore ... gone 404, but still lives on at wayback michine
https://web.archive.org/web/20050409124902/http://www.yelavich.com/cicshist.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20071124013919/http://www.yelavich.com/history/toc.htm

OS/360 was enormously disk intensive ... with all the fragmented module
loads ... that I did very careful system generations ... arranging
sysgen statements to carefully place files&modules to optimize disk arm
seek and PDS directory multi-track search. I've frequently mentioned
that student fortran programs ran less than second on 709 tape->tape
... but initial move to OS/360 (360/67 running as 360/65) student
fortran took over a minute, installing HASP ... cut that in half.
Initial careful sysgens cut it almost by 2/3rds (most of it still
furious disk activity). Didn't get to better than 709 until single step
WATFOR montor (batched multiple jobs in single execution). Single step
startup overhead was still over 4secs ... but batching 40-60 student
jobs running at (watfor) 20,000 cards/min (333 cards/sec) ...  student
jobs 30-60 cards, so 4sec startup/shutdown spread over 50 batched jobs
4sec/50=.08sec/job plus 50cards/333=.15sec/job ... avg .23sec.

... note that ACP/TPF was highly optimized code and was really difficult
to add hardware multiprocessor support. 3081 was originally going to be
multiprocessor only machine and IBM was afraid that the whole ACP/TPF
market would move to clone mainframe makers ... that were coming out
with new, faster single processor machines (high-end single proceessor
amdahl had nearly the same processing as two processor 3081k ... and two
processor high-end amdahl was twice that ...  better than the four
processor 3084). Eventually IBM did come out with 3083 ... a 3081 with
one of the processors removed (initially for the ACP/TPF market).  It
took a while longer and whole lot of effort before had ACP/TPF
supporting real multiprocessor operation.

past SMP, multiprocessor, compare&swap, etc posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

... trivia: problem for CICS was even worse ... above referenced cics
history table of contents ... doesn't have multiprocessor exploitation
until 2004.

... other CICS trivia: CICS had a slight of hand work around, running
multiple instances with workload partitioned across the different
instances. I visited a datacenter around the turn of the century that
claimed it was concurrently running 120-130 CICS instances on their
system.

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Thread

Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-07-20 12:14 -0700
  Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2021-07-21 01:46 +0000
    Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> - 2021-07-22 14:46 +0000
      Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 chris <chris-nospam@tridac.net> - 2021-07-22 17:37 +0100
        Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-07-22 16:47 +0000
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-07-22 17:51 +0100
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2021-07-22 17:25 +0000
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2021-07-22 18:10 +0100
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2021-07-23 00:13 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 TrailingEdgeTechnologies <bbreynolds@aol.com> - 2021-07-22 19:32 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 TrailingEdgeTechnologies <bbreynolds@aol.com> - 2021-07-22 19:44 -0700
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2021-07-22 15:14 -0400
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2021-07-22 20:52 +0100
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2021-07-22 17:05 -0400
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2021-07-23 09:13 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-07-23 11:48 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2021-07-23 20:13 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2021-07-24 21:35 +0000
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-07-22 21:10 +0100
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-07-22 14:16 -0600
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2021-07-22 17:08 -0400
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 TrailingEdgeTechnologies <bbreynolds@aol.com> - 2021-07-22 20:08 -0700
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-07-23 16:18 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> - 2021-07-24 11:54 -0600
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> - 2021-07-25 21:51 +0100
            Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2021-07-25 21:12 +0000
              Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2021-07-26 05:32 +0000
                Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> - 2021-07-26 08:39 +0000
                Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 gareth evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> - 2021-07-26 12:21 +0100
                Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-07-26 18:45 -0400
                Re: sixbit, the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 gareth evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> - 2021-07-27 11:29 +0100
        Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 TrailingEdgeTechnologies <bbreynolds@aol.com> - 2021-07-22 19:43 -0700
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-07-23 11:46 -0700
    Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-07-23 11:56 -0700
      Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2021-07-23 16:27 -0700
        Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-07 12:38 -0700
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2021-08-07 20:04 +0000
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2021-08-07 22:24 +0100
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2021-08-07 22:27 +0100
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-10 11:49 -0700
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2021-08-10 15:34 -0400
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2021-08-07 18:13 -0700
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-10 11:45 -0700
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2021-08-11 06:36 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2021-08-11 08:00 -0700
          Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2021-08-10 10:57 -0700
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2021-08-10 18:29 +0000
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-10 11:54 -0700
            Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-08-10 19:44 +0000
              Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-13 12:26 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2021-08-13 09:49 -1000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 undefined Hancock-4 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> - 2021-08-16 12:52 -0700
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-08-16 20:06 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2021-08-16 23:31 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-08-17 15:41 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2021-08-18 16:38 +0000
                Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2021-08-18 18:29 +0100
      Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2021-07-27 18:12 -1000
        Re: the wonders of SABRE, was Magnetic Drum reservations 1952 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2021-07-27 18:49 -1000

csiph-web