I love hearing these types of stories, which have a few effects on me: -Admiration of those who worked with so little to produce so much -Thankfulness for the resources we have now -Excitement for the forthcoming technogies -Despair about using current technologies, knowing they will be supplanted in a few years
Regarding the last point, does anybody have a good response to the Moore's law conundrum that some programs which will take, say, ten years to run now will take only ~1 year to run 8 years from now, making it futile to run the program now? Maybe it is never worth it to run such processes, assuming Moore's law will continue? Another question: Dale Tronrud mentioned the disconnect between clock speed and actual processor performance. Is there a simple way to understand this disconnect? I have wondered for a long time about this now, especially since it is often raised as a rationalization for using Mac's even though the dollar:processorHz is much higher in Mac's than PC's. Jacob Keller On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 4:16 AM, Robert Esnouf <[email protected]> wrote: > At times DEC we innovative in ways that no hardware company > today even comes close. But I guess innovation and commercial > success do not go hand in hand. OK, this is abridged from > Wikipedia, but much of it is true... > > Digital supported/developed the ANSI standards, especially the > ASCII and multinational character sets. > > The first versions of the C language and the Unix operating > system ran on Digital's PDP series of computers > > Digital produced the first pure 64-bit microprocessor, > AlphAXP. > > Digital collaborated on the Ethernet standard and made the > commercially success it is today. > > Digital, though their Hierarchical Storage Controllers, > delivered the first hardware RAID. > > Digital was the primary sponsor for the X Window System > project (project Athena). > > Digital was one of the first businesses connected to the > Internet with dec.com, registered in 1985, being one of the > very first .com domains. Digital was also the first computer > vendor to open a public website, on October 1, 1993. > AltaVista, created by Digital, was one of the first > comprehensive Internet search engines. (Although Lycos was > earlier, it was much more limited.) > > DEC invented Digital Linear Tape (DLT) which was so much more > reliable than helical scan technologies such as DAT. > > Digital were even developing the forerunner of the iPod (a > hard-disk based MP3 player) back in 1998 before the merger > with Compaq. > > > Regards, > Robert > > -- > > Dr. Robert Esnouf, > University Research Lecturer > and Head of Research Computing, > Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, > Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK > > Emails: [email protected] Tel: (+44) - 1865 - 287783 > and [email protected] Fax: (+44) - 1865 - 287547 > -- ******************************************* Jacob Pearson Keller Northwestern University Medical Scientist Training Program cel: 773.608.9185 email: [email protected] *******************************************
