Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) 
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on 09/17/2008
   at 10:12 AM, Rick Fochtman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

>IIRC, Stretch was an OCTAL machine, with 72-bit words. Or am I confusing 
>it with another machine?

Or you're counting redundant bits as part of the word size; Stretch was 64
bits plus error checking.
 
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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Walt Farrell 
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:30:08 EDT, IBM Mainframe Discussion List
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>
>From the article on Stretch:
>"[Stretch] ... could perform 100 billion computations a day and handle half
>a million instructions per second."
>
>There are 86400 seconds in one day.  Half a million instructions per  second
>for one day equals 43 billion instructions, which somehow were able to
>perform 100 billion computations.  I don't know of any z/OS instructions 
that can
>perform more than one computation per instruction, but I must confess I
>haven't read about all the newest ones yet.  How was Stretch able to 
perform over
>two computations for each instruction handled?

FWIW, according to Wikipedia Stretch ended up performing 1.2 MIPS.

-- 
  Walt

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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread P S 
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 9:30 AM, (IBM Mainframe Discussion List)
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From the article on Stretch:
> "[Stretch] ... could perform 100 billion computations a day and handle half
> a million instructions per second."
>
> There are 86400 seconds in one day.  Half a million instructions per  second
> for one day equals 43 billion instructions, which somehow were able to
> perform 100 billion computations.  I don't know of any z/OS instructions  
> that can
> perform more than one computation per instruction, but I must confess I
> haven't read about all the newest ones yet.  How was Stretch able to  perform 
> over
> two computations for each instruction handled?

Well, obviously it had more than one CPU! (JOKE)

You want reporters should be able to do math?? Not on this planet, I'm afraid...

Actually, given CISC architecture, it seems possible that "half a
million instructions per second" is an *average*, and that
computations (say, BCTR -- "subtract one", hey, that's a computation!)
would use less than the average, so more than 0.5MIPS was possible. Of
course, like all benchmarks, that would be meaningless in the real
world.

Alternatively, maybe they meant "100 billion computations a
day...across all 9 machines"!

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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Ed Finnell 
 
In a message dated 9/17/2008 10:13:40 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

IIRC, Stretch was an OCTAL machine, with 72-bit words. Or am I  confusing 
it with another machine?


>>
Along with your Google?
 
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030) 







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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Rick Fochtman 


I don't recall memory protection on Stretch, and it was S/360 that 
restricted byte handling to aligned 8-bit bytes; Stretch could handle 
variable byte sizes, at least up to a word (64 bits.)

-
IIRC, Stretch was an OCTAL machine, with 72-bit words. Or am I confusing 
it with another machine?


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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) 
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on 09/17/2008
   at 07:23 AM, Tom Marchant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

>"Fact is that Allen and the 300-some people who collaborated on Stretch
>invented many of the concepts that later became standard computer
>technologies. The short list includes multiprogramming, pipelining,
>memory protection, memory interleaving, and the eight-bit byte."

I don't recall memory protection on Stretch, and it was S/360 that
restricted byte handling to aligned 8-bit bytes; Stretch could handle
variable byte sizes, at least up to a word (64 bits.)

Some of the things that Stretch did pioneer include

   The predecssors to the 1301 disk drive, 1403 printer and Hypertape.

   The 8-bit channel architecture used on the 7000 Series for the
   1301

A highly specialized form of array processing, in Harvest.

The first two may not sound like much, but had major impact.
 
-- 
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 ISO position; see  
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Mark Hammond 
Vector arithmetic perhaps?


Mark Hammond
-Original Message-
From: (IBM Mainframe Discussion List) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 8:30 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: OT: Stretch article

 
 
>From the article on Stretch:
"[Stretch] ... could perform 100 billion computations a day and handle
half  
a million instructions per second."
 
There are 86400 seconds in one day.  Half a million instructions per
second 
for one day equals 43 billion instructions, which somehow were able to  
perform 100 billion computations.  I don't know of any z/OS instructions
that can perform more than one computation per instruction, but I must
confess I haven't read about all the newest ones yet.  How was Stretch
able to  perform over two computations for each instruction handled?
 
Bill  Fairchild
Rocket Software

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Re: OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread (IBM Mainframe Discussion List) 
 
 
>From the article on Stretch:
"[Stretch] ... could perform 100 billion computations a day and handle half  
a million instructions per second."
 
There are 86400 seconds in one day.  Half a million instructions per  second 
for one day equals 43 billion instructions, which somehow were able to  
perform 100 billion computations.  I don't know of any z/OS instructions  that 
can 
perform more than one computation per instruction, but I must confess I  
haven't read about all the newest ones yet.  How was Stretch able to  perform 
over 
two computations for each instruction handled?
 
Bill  Fairchild
Rocket Software





**Pt...Have you heard the news? There's a new fashion blog, 
plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com.  
(http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty000514)

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OT: Stretch article

2008-09-17 Thread Tom Marchant 
"Fact is that Allen and the 300-some people who collaborated on Stretch
invented many of the concepts that later became standard computer
technologies. The short list includes multiprogramming, pipelining, memory
protection, memory interleaving, and the eight-bit byte."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10039963-60.html?tag=mncol;posts

-- 
Tom Marchant

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