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Re: innovation from Armonk, was 'smttter IBMdroids

From John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Newsgroups comp.arch
Subject Re: innovation from Armonk, was 'smttter IBMdroids
Date 2011-09-02 21:21 +0000
Organization Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Message-ID <j3rhbs$2p17$1@gal.iecc.com> (permalink)
References <_VB7q.3677$YA4.814@newsfe14.iad> <j3p05u$5do$2@dont-email.me> <58f4a56b-416d-47a6-9e38-531cea05c2f5@en1g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>

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>IBM, at least as represented here, seems to want to claim credit for
>an awful lot.

There are some things that IBM definitely did invent: Fortran, disk
storage, byte addressed memory, relational databases, and logical
computer architecture separate from the design of individual
computers.  There are plenty of other things they didn't, like virtual
memory and floating point arithmetic.

IBM was a credible if not particularly cost effective competetor in
the supercomputer market with the Stretch and then the 360/91 and
/195.  The /91 had some clever technical innovarions like register
renaming to allow more operations to proceed in parallel.  But it
didn't help that the 360's floating point design was so badly botched,
or that their high end computers kept going hugely over budget.  (I
gather that both the Stretch and the /91 were sold below cost.)

I never understood the goal of the vector facility.  By the time it
came along, it was pretty clear that the future of supercomputing
was in specialized machines, not add-ons to mainframes.

R's,
John

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Thread

'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-08-31 22:15 -0400
  Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-08-31 22:20 -0400
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-08-31 22:31 -0400
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-01 07:30 -0700
  Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2011-09-01 09:48 -0700
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-01 17:58 +0100
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> - 2011-09-01 10:58 -0700
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-01 18:51 +0100
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-09-01 15:42 -0400
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2011-09-01 18:19 -0500
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-09-01 20:57 -0400
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-02 09:17 +0100
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-02 09:19 +0100
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2011-09-02 04:44 -0500
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-02 11:39 +0100
            Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2011-09-02 11:14 -0500
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2011-09-02 04:47 -0500
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-02 11:26 +0100
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-09-02 08:48 -0400
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-09-02 09:29 -0400
  Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Del Cecchi <delcecchi@gmail.com> - 2011-09-01 17:15 -0500
    Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-02 10:10 -0700
      Re: innovation from Armonk, was 'smttter IBMdroids John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> - 2011-09-02 21:21 +0000
        Re: innovation from Armonk, was 'smttter IBMdroids nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-09-02 21:56 +0100
        Re: innovation from Armonk, was 'smttter IBMdroids Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2011-09-02 17:49 -0400
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Del Cecchi <delcecchi@gmail.com> - 2011-09-02 18:04 -0500
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Thomas Womack <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2011-09-03 00:16 +0100
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-03 14:25 -0400
            Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Thomas Womack <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2011-09-03 20:09 +0100
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-03 22:02 -0400
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Del Cecchi <delcecchi@gmail.com> - 2011-09-03 21:50 -0500
            Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-03 23:52 -0400
      Re: 'smttter IBMdroids "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-09-05 08:26 -0700
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> - 2011-09-05 11:14 -0700
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> - 2011-09-05 22:05 +0200
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-05 17:27 -0400
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-05 17:16 -0400
          Re: 'smttter IBMdroids "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-09-05 14:40 -0700
            Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> - 2011-09-05 15:45 -0700
        Re: 'smttter IBMdroids Del Cecchi <delcecchi@gmail.com> - 2011-09-06 21:47 -0500

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