Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.arch > #111620 > unrolled thread

The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers

Back to article view | Back to comp.arch

Contents

  The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2025-05-17 20:00 +0000
    Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-17 21:27 +0000
      Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2025-05-18 05:46 +0000
        Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-18 18:23 +0300
          Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-18 22:02 +0000
          Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com> - 2025-05-19 01:08 +0000
            Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-19 01:56 +0000
              Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com> - 2025-05-19 03:12 +0000
                OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-19 06:22 +0000
                  Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-19 17:10 +0000
                    Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-19 17:46 +0000
                      Re: OoO execution ze@zerandconsulting.com (Ze) - 2025-05-19 19:09 +0000
                        Re: OoO execution Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-20 00:04 +0000
                          Re: OoO execution mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-20 00:30 +0000
                            Re: OoO execution scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-20 13:52 +0000
                      Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2025-05-21 12:52 -0400
                        Re: OoO execution Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2025-05-21 13:14 -0400
                        Re: OoO execution moi <findlaybill@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2025-05-21 18:47 +0100
                  Re: OoO execution EricP <ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com> - 2025-05-19 14:33 -0400
                  Re: OoO execution quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com> - 2025-05-19 19:08 +0000
                    Re: OoO execution Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> - 2025-05-19 22:04 +0200
                      Re: OoO execution Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-19 23:27 +0300
                      Re: OoO execution John Savard <quadibloc@invalid.invalid> - 2025-07-16 14:27 +0000
                        Re: OoO execution mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-07-16 18:27 +0000
                          Re: OoO execution Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2025-07-16 17:45 -0400
                          Re: OoO execution Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-07-26 02:45 +0000
                            Re: OoO execution John Savard <quadibloc@invalid.invalid> - 2025-07-31 20:38 +0000
                              Re: OoO execution Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-08-01 15:02 +0300
                                Re: OoO execution John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-08-01 15:44 +0000
                  Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-19 23:41 +0300
                    Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-20 00:01 +0000
                    Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-20 21:21 +0000
                      Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-30 13:28 +0300
                        Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> - 2025-05-30 10:51 -0700
                          Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-30 19:36 +0000
                            Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-31 07:57 +0000
                          Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-30 22:05 +0000
                            Re: OoO execution mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-30 23:01 +0000
                        Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-31 08:10 +0000
                  Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers) Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2025-05-29 19:02 +0000
                    Re: OoO execution mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-29 20:06 +0000
                      Re: OoO execution Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-29 22:20 +0000
                      Re: OoO execution David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> - 2025-05-29 18:36 -0500
                Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-19 07:50 +0000
              Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-19 16:55 +0300
                Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-19 23:58 +0000
                  Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-20 13:45 +0300
                    Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-20 16:59 +0000
                    Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-20 19:59 +0000
                      Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-20 22:48 +0000
                      Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-21 11:21 +0300
                        Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-21 08:44 +0000
                        Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-21 16:09 +0000
                          Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-21 20:11 +0300
                            Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-21 20:04 +0000
                          Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> - 2025-05-25 21:08 +0000
                            Re: 360/44, The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-25 22:50 +0000
      Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-18 11:33 +0300
        Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-18 22:01 +0000
          Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-19 16:35 +0300
            Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> - 2025-05-19 09:49 -0700
            Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-19 18:14 +0000
              Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-19 23:11 +0300
                Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> - 2025-05-20 01:36 -0500
              Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-20 05:40 +0000
                Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-20 16:58 +0000
                  Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-21 00:28 +0000
              Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers "Brian G. Lucas" <bagel99@gmail.com> - 2025-05-26 11:48 -0500
                Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-26 18:01 +0000
                  Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers EricP <ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com> - 2025-05-26 16:52 -0400
                    Re: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> - 2025-05-26 19:27 -0700

Page 3 of 4 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3] 4  Next page →

#111884 — Re: OoO execution

On Thu, 29 May 2025 19:02:11 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:

> Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
>> quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com> writes:

>>>Eventually, IBM caught up with the Control
>>>Data 6600 by perfecting pipelining in the IBM 360/91,

At the cost of about 3× the number of gates and power along with
a 60% increase in the clock rate (60ns versus 100ns). This advantage
vanished about the time of first /91 deliveries with CDC 7600 going
to a ~27ns clock along with pipelining and concurrent calculation.

>                                                        and then
> combining
>>>it with cache in the 360/195.

A last gasp for leadership in Big number crunching for IBM.

>                                From the Pentium II onwards, that's the
>>>way computers are made nowadays.

Once everyone can afford the gates to make pipeline staging latches
it is the natural way for design. Prior to this point, the designers
were more focused on "getting it on in a single die" than getting
the highest possible performance--often limited by the speed of
the external interface more than calculations inside.

>> Pipelining and caches are already used on the MIPS R2000 in 1986, and
>> the 486 in 1989.
>
> Or the 801.  That may have been the first machine to have
> separate I- and D-caches (was it?)

Without disagreeing with the above::

MIPS R2000 (and R3000) had a unified cache--read twice per cycle on
clock high and clock low. R3000 was faster in writing (STs) to the
cache than R2000. Tablewalks in SW via a big hash table.

Mc68010 had a "loop buffer" of a couple handful of instructions.
Mc68020 had 256B instruction cache no TLB
Mc68030 had 256B I$ 256B D$ and ~32E TLB tablewalks in HW

Mc88100 had 16KB I$ with 64E TLB 16KB D$ with 64E TLB tablewalks
in HW.

CDC 6600 had a multi-word instruction stack 6600 and a significantly
larger instruction stack 7600 with backward branch prediction.
Base+Bounds memory protection 6600. Context switch in ~16 cycles
by writing out current state while reading in new state.

Many machines overlapped Fetch-DECODE with EXECUTE-WRITEBACK all the
way back to beginning as a 2 stage pipeline. This, alone, makes the
point where pipelining "took over" difficult to judge.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111885 — Re: OoO execution

On Thu, 29 May 2025 20:06:21 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:

> quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Eventually, IBM caught up with the Control Data 6600 by perfecting
>> pipelining in the IBM 360/91,
>
> At the cost of about 3× the number of gates and power along with a 60%
> increase in the clock rate (60ns versus 100ns). This advantage vanished
> about the time of first /91 deliveries with CDC 7600 going to a ~27ns
> clock along with pipelining and concurrent calculation.

Like I said, part of IBM’s tradition of overpromising and
underdelivering.

But it served its purpose, that of dissuading customers from buying
the CDC product.

> Mc68010 had a "loop buffer" of a couple handful of instructions.
> Mc68020 had 256B instruction cache no TLB
> Mc68030 had 256B I$ 256B D$ and ~32E TLB tablewalks in HW

As I recall, the ’030 wasn’t that much of an advance over the ’020.
But the 68040 was a major step forward. And the 68060 wasn’t too bad,
either. But by that time the major customer (Apple) had lost interest.
I think it was used in some Amiga machines.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111888 — Re: OoO execution

On 5/29/25 3:06 PM, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
> Mc68010 had a "loop buffer" of a couple handful of instructions.

Not exactly. In the very specific case of the decrement and branch on 
condition it could lock up its prefetch queue (two words) and 
instruction register. Since the dbcc instruction was two words, this 
meant it only worked with single word instructions.

Faster but very limited.


-- 
http://davesrocketworks.com
David Schultz
"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." - Sam Spade

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111640

On Mon, 19 May 2025 03:12:12 +0000, quadibloc wrote:

> Eventually, IBM caught up with the Control  Data 6600 by perfecting
> pipelining in the IBM 360/91 ...

After promising it for something like two years (originally as the 
360/90), and making claims that it would leave the CDC machine for dead, 
telling potential customers for the latter to just wait for the IBM 
alternative, it’ll be better, cross our trustworthy corporate hearts.

CDC sued IBM over the FUD campaign and the lost sales. And against all the 
predicted odds, they won.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111642

On Mon, 19 May 2025 01:56:50 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Mon, 19 May 2025 01:08:11 +0000, quadibloc wrote:
> 
> > Yes, but the CDC 6600 and 7600, while powerful computers, were
> > ordinary computers. They were not vector machines.  
> 
> They were pipelined machines.

7600 was.
6600 had some parts pipelined, but execution units were non-pipelined.

> They were orders of magnitude faster
> than anything from IBM.

That sounds like exaggeration.

> They pioneered the very concept of a
> “supercomputer”.
> 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030_Stretch

> There was nothing “ordinary” about that.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111660

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 <ldo@nz.invalid> 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.

>> 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.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111670

On Mon, 19 May 2025 23:58:16 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> 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 <ldo@nz.invalid> 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". 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.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111675

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 <ldo@nz.invalid> 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 <ldo@nz.invalid> 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.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111679

According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
>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". 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.

Those 360 models seem wrong.  The 360/50 was a midrange machine that
shipped in August 1965, the /65 was a large machine that shipped
in November 1964, and the 360/75 was a high end machine that
shipped in January 1966.  They were all announced at the same
time, give or take IBM's replacing the paper 60 and 70 with the 
faster 65 and 75.

STRETCH was about 1.2 MIPS, the /50 was 0.133 scientific, 0.169 commercial,
the /65 was .563 and .567, and the /75 was .940 and .670, so only
the /75 was a plausible replacement.  The high end machine was the /91
which shipped late and over budget in Oct 1967 and was much faster,
1.9 MIPS scientific and 1.8 MIPS commercial.  (I think the 91's
actual commercial performance was much lower since it simulated
decimal arithmetic in software, but nobody ran RPG programs on
a /91.)

For concrete numbers a double precision floating point memory
to register add on the /50 took 9.7us, /65 took 2.5us, /75 took .92us

Floating multiply was 47us, 7.7us, 4.1us.

The numbers for the /91 depended on whether the operands were
available but if they were adds were 120ns, multiply 180ns.

The 6600 was reported to be three times faster than STRETCH which
would have been 3.6 MIPS, a lot faster than any 360 of the time
and well over an order of magnitude faster than the not particularly
fast 360/50.



-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111683

On Tue, 20 May 2025 19:59:48 +0000, John Levine wrote:

> According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
>>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". 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.
>
> Those 360 models seem wrong.  The 360/50 was a midrange machine that
> shipped in August 1965, the /65 was a large machine that shipped
> in November 1964, and the 360/75 was a high end machine that
> shipped in January 1966.  They were all announced at the same
> time, give or take IBM's replacing the paper 60 and 70 with the
> faster 65 and 75.
>
> STRETCH was about 1.2 MIPS, the /50 was 0.133 scientific, 0.169
> commercial,
> the /65 was .563 and .567, and the /75 was .940 and .670, so only
> the /75 was a plausible replacement.  The high end machine was the /91
> which shipped late and over budget in Oct 1967 and was much faster,
> 1.9 MIPS scientific and 1.8 MIPS commercial.  (I think the 91's
> actual commercial performance was much lower since it simulated
> decimal arithmetic in software, but nobody ran RPG programs on
> a /91.)
>
> For concrete numbers a double precision floating point memory
> to register add on the /50 took 9.7us, /65 took 2.5us, /75 took .92us
>
> Floating multiply was 47us, 7.7us, 4.1us.
>
> The numbers for the /91 depended on whether the operands were
> available but if they were adds were 120ns, multiply 180ns.
>
> The 6600 was reported to be three times faster than STRETCH which
> would have been 3.6 MIPS, a lot faster than any 360 of the time
> and well over an order of magnitude faster than the not particularly
> fast 360/50.

CDC 6600 was a 100ns machine with about 3-cycle per instruction perf
overall. This corresponds rather well with John's statement above.

>
>

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111707

On Tue, 20 May 2025 19:59:48 -0000 (UTC)
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
> >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". 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.  
> 
> Those 360 models seem wrong.  The 360/50 was a midrange machine that
> shipped in August 1965, the /65 was a large machine that shipped
> in November 1964, 

Do you mean, November 1965?

> and the 360/75 was a high end machine that
> shipped in January 1966.  They were all announced at the same
> time, give or take IBM's replacing the paper 60 and 70 with the 
> faster 65 and 75.
> 

Sorry, I did not read Wikipedia articles about /50 and /65 with
sufficient attention and confused announcement with shipment. Didn't
realize that for /50 the time between announcement and shipment was
much longer than for /65.
W.r.t. CDC 6600 Wikipedia article does not state an exact date of the
1st shipment at all, just saying that it was in 1965.


> STRETCH was about 1.2 MIPS, the /50 was 0.133 scientific, 0.169
> commercial, the /65 was .563 and .567, and the /75 was .940 and .670,
> so only the /75 was a plausible replacement.  The high end machine
> was the /91 which shipped late and over budget in Oct 1967 and was
> much faster, 1.9 MIPS scientific and 1.8 MIPS commercial.  (I think
> the 91's actual commercial performance was much lower since it
> simulated decimal arithmetic in software, but nobody ran RPG programs
> on a /91.)
> 
> For concrete numbers a double precision floating point memory
> to register add on the /50 took 9.7us, /65 took 2.5us, /75 took .92us
> 
> Floating multiply was 47us, 7.7us, 4.1us.
> 
> The numbers for the /91 depended on whether the operands were
> available but if they were adds were 120ns, multiply 180ns.
> 
> The 6600 was reported to be three times faster than STRETCH which
> would have been 3.6 MIPS, a lot faster than any 360 of the time
> and well over an order of magnitude faster than the not particularly
> fast 360/50.
> 
> 
> 

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111708

On Wed, 21 May 2025 11:21:25 +0300, Michael S wrote:

> W.r.t. CDC 6600 Wikipedia article does not state an exact date of the
> 1st shipment at all, just saying that it was in 1965.

Cooling was a vicious problem in the early units. Charles J Murray’s “The 
Supermen” says (page 107) that “the Livermore lab had expected a 6600 in 
February 1964, but didn’t receive one until August”. So some units were 
shipping in 1964. It says “it took until early 1965 before Control Data 
engineers finally exorcised all of the 6600’s demons”.

From that book’s title, you would assume it’s not just about Seymour Cray. 
In fact he’s the main figure, and very fawning on him it is, too. It is 
less complimentary towards the other main “superman”, Steve Chen, who was 
the one who oversaw the development of the Cray-X/MP and Cray-Y/MP, which 
were backward-compatible successors to the Cray-1, while Seymour himself 
went off to (try to) come up with the Cray-2, Cray-3 and Cray-4.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111714

According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
>> According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
>> >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". 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.  
>> 
>> Those 360 models seem wrong.  The 360/50 was a midrange machine that
>> shipped in August 1965, the /65 was a large machine that shipped
>> in November 1964, 
>
>Do you mean, November 1965?

Yes, of course, I can't type.

>> and the 360/75 was a high end machine that
>> shipped in January 1966.  They were all announced at the same
>> time, give or take IBM's replacing the paper 60 and 70 with the 
>> faster 65 and 75.
>
>Sorry, I did not read Wikipedia articles about /50 and /65 with
>sufficient attention and confused announcement with shipment. Didn't
>realize that for /50 the time between announcement and shipment was
>much longer than for /65.

With that correction, only three months which doesn't seem like much. The
physical planning for power and cooling and raised floors and such to be ready
for delivery would take longer than that.

>W.r.t. CDC 6600 Wikipedia article does not state an exact date of the
>1st shipment at all, just saying that it was in 1965.

Says here late 1964. It was a huge embarassment to IBM. I imagine a large part
of that was that it blew up IBM's longstanding belief that you had to make a
computer really complicated to make it fast, viz. STRETCH and 360/91.  

https://mncomputinghistory.com/control-data-corporation/

IBM sort of came around to that with the 360/44, which implemented a scientific
subset of the 360's instruction set and ran nearly as fast as a /65. It was
intended for process control so they added priority interrupts and some real
time I/O.
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111720

On Wed, 21 May 2025 16:09:13 -0000 (UTC)
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
> >> According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:  
> >> >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". 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.    
> >> 
> >> Those 360 models seem wrong.  The 360/50 was a midrange machine
> >> that shipped in August 1965, the /65 was a large machine that
> >> shipped in November 1964,   
> >
> >Do you mean, November 1965?  
> 
> Yes, of course, I can't type.
> 
> >> and the 360/75 was a high end machine that
> >> shipped in January 1966.  They were all announced at the same
> >> time, give or take IBM's replacing the paper 60 and 70 with the 
> >> faster 65 and 75.  
> >
> >Sorry, I did not read Wikipedia articles about /50 and /65 with
> >sufficient attention and confused announcement with shipment. Didn't
> >realize that for /50 the time between announcement and shipment was
> >much longer than for /65.  
> 
> With that correction, only three months which doesn't seem like much.
> The physical planning for power and cooling and raised floors and
> such to be ready for delivery would take longer than that.
> 

According to Wikipedia:
Model Announcement Shipment A-to-S
50    1964-04      1965-08  18 months
65    1965-04      1965-11   7 months

> >W.r.t. CDC 6600 Wikipedia article does not state an exact date of the
> >1st shipment at all, just saying that it was in 1965.  
> 
> Says here late 1964. It was a huge embarassment to IBM. I imagine a
> large part of that was that it blew up IBM's longstanding belief that
> you had to make a computer really complicated to make it fast, viz.
> STRETCH and 360/91.  
> 
> https://mncomputinghistory.com/control-data-corporation/
> 

Probably, mncomputinghistory and Wikipedia have different definitions
of delivery. 

> IBM sort of came around to that with the 360/44, which implemented a
> scientific subset of the 360's instruction set and ran nearly as fast
> as a /65. It was intended for process control so they added priority
> interrupts and some real time I/O.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111726

According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:
>> >Sorry, I did not read Wikipedia articles about /50 and /65 with
>> >sufficient attention and confused announcement with shipment. Didn't
>> >realize that for /50 the time between announcement and shipment was
>> >much longer than for /65.  
>> 
>> With that correction, only three months which doesn't seem like much.
>> The physical planning for power and cooling and raised floors and
>> such to be ready for delivery would take longer than that.
>
>According to Wikipedia:
>Model Announcement Shipment A-to-S
>50    1964-04      1965-08  18 months
>65    1965-04      1965-11   7 months

The original 360 announcement included the model 60 which was replaced by the 65
which had faster memory. I believe that all of the 60 orders were converted to
65 orders. According to Pugh et. al., the 65 shipped ahead of schedule, sooner
than the 60 was supposed to.
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111796

On 2025-05-21, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> Says here late 1964. It was a huge embarassment to IBM. I imagine a large part
> of that was that it blew up IBM's longstanding belief that you had to make a
> computer really complicated to make it fast, viz. STRETCH and 360/91.  
>
> https://mncomputinghistory.com/control-data-corporation/
>
> IBM sort of came around to that with the 360/44, which implemented a scientific
> subset of the 360's instruction set and ran nearly as fast as a /65. It was
> intended for process control so they added priority interrupts and some real
> time I/O.

I think it was early 1970 that I visited Haldor Topsoe (chemical
engineering co in Denmark) which had recently installed a 360/44. I was
disappointed to learn that it was not program compatible with other 360
machines, so it had to use a tailored OS; AFAIR a modified DOS system.
And I think also it had a different floating point format.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111797 — Re: 360/44, The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers

According to Lars Poulsen  <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com>:
>> IBM sort of came around to that with the 360/44, which implemented a scientific
>> subset of the 360's instruction set and ran nearly as fast as a /65. It was
>> intended for process control so they added priority interrupts and some real
>> time I/O.
>
>I think it was early 1970 that I visited Haldor Topsoe (chemical
>engineering co in Denmark) which had recently installed a 360/44. I was
>disappointed to learn that it was not program compatible with other 360
>machines, so it had to use a tailored OS; AFAIR a modified DOS system.
>And I think also it had a different floating point format.

44PS was DOS-ish, manuals at bitsavers if you care.  It was pretty simple,
compile and run Fortran and assembler programs with a simple disk structure.

It used the same floating point format as other 360s but had a knob on
the console you could turn to use fewer precision digits and run faster.

I would be surprised if anyone bought a /44 and didn't use it for realtime
or process control.




-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111626

On Sat, 17 May 2025 21:27:04 +0000
mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) wrote:

> Did the book relate the story of why CRAY-1 presented a DC-load to
> the power supply:: that is, the ECL gates were all of the form where
> they would switch 20 ma into either the true or the complement out-
> put and thus have no AC energy at the power supply level ??
> 
> During the CDC 7600 reign, when performing vector calculations,
> (even though CDC 7600 was not a vector machine, it could stream
> calculations through its execution window at impressive rates);
> Certain data bit-patterns in CDC 7600 would cause more Gnd bounce
> and Vdd drop than the gates cols accommodate and the machine would
> take a data-dependent hard crash.
> 

Which voltage, current and frequency are we talking about?


> So, Cray got rid of the problem by presenting a DC-load to the
> power supply.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111629

On Sun, 18 May 2025 8:33:30 +0000, Michael S wrote:

> On Sat, 17 May 2025 21:27:04 +0000
> mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) wrote:
>
>> Did the book relate the story of why CRAY-1 presented a DC-load to
>> the power supply:: that is, the ECL gates were all of the form where
>> they would switch 20 ma into either the true or the complement out-
>> put and thus have no AC energy at the power supply level ??
>>
>> During the CDC 7600 reign, when performing vector calculations,
>> (even though CDC 7600 was not a vector machine, it could stream
>> calculations through its execution window at impressive rates);
>> Certain data bit-patterns in CDC 7600 would cause more Gnd bounce
>> and Vdd drop than the gates cols accommodate and the machine would
>> take a data-dependent hard crash.
>>
>
> Which voltage, current and frequency are we talking about?

Vdd and Gnd which fed the integrated logic gates.

>
>> So, Cray got rid of the problem by presenting a DC-load to the
>> power supply.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#111641

On Sun, 18 May 2025 22:01:19 +0000
mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) wrote:

> On Sun, 18 May 2025 8:33:30 +0000, Michael S wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 17 May 2025 21:27:04 +0000
> > mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) wrote:
> >  
> >> Did the book relate the story of why CRAY-1 presented a DC-load to
> >> the power supply:: that is, the ECL gates were all of the form
> >> where they would switch 20 ma into either the true or the
> >> complement out- put and thus have no AC energy at the power supply
> >> level ??
> >>
> >> During the CDC 7600 reign, when performing vector calculations,
> >> (even though CDC 7600 was not a vector machine, it could stream
> >> calculations through its execution window at impressive rates);
> >> Certain data bit-patterns in CDC 7600 would cause more Gnd bounce
> >> and Vdd drop than the gates cols accommodate and the machine would
> >> take a data-dependent hard crash.
> >>  
> >
> > Which voltage, current and frequency are we talking about?  
> 
> Vdd and Gnd which fed the integrated logic gates.
> 

My question was about absolute numbers. Volts, amperes, nanoseconds.

> >  
> >> So, Cray got rid of the problem by presenting a DC-load to the
> >> power supply.  

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

Page 3 of 4 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3] 4  Next page →

Back to top | Article view | comp.arch

csiph-web