20 (Материалы к экзамену)

Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.sys.super

From: eugene@sally.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

Reply-To: eugene@george.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

Subject: [l/m 1/2/98] IBM and Amdahl -- comp.parallel (20/28) FAQ

Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Date: 20 Feb 1998 13:03:20 GMT

Message-ID: <6cjuuo$1n6$1@cnn.nas.nasa.gov>

Archive-Name: superpar-faq

Last-modified: 2 Jan 1998

20IBM and Amdahl (the man, the article)

22Grand challenges and HPCC

24Suggested (required) readings

26Dead computer architecture society

28Dedications

2Introduction and Table of Contents and justification

4Comp.parallel news group history

6parlib

8comp.parallel group dynamics

10Related news groups, archives and references

12

14

16

18Supercomputing and Crayisms

Keywords and phrases:

Watson memo, marketing, COBOL, mythology, aspiring blue boxes, DEC,

laws: Amdahl, other,

challenge, debates, prizes: Karp, Bell, Hillis

Is a supercomputer, a mainframe?

================================

Short answer: yes.

Are all mainframes supercomputers?

================================

Short answer: No.

Think subsets.

Is a cluster a mainframe?

-------------------------

Maybe not. (No one ever promised you yes or no answers.)

Why do people dump on IBM in this news group?

======================================== =====

We'll get to the good positive stuff in a moment, but first the chronology:

IBM is a late entry into the supercomputing market.

It's lateness, it's aloofness, and a certain degree of sales arrogance

has turned the readership of this news group off. You merely need to

assert IBM's superiority, and you will find out. Actually, you might

get dead silence, because the long timers in this group don't care much

anymore. It's historic. BASICALLY: don't worry about it.

A few people will say that IBM claims credit for inventing everything.

These people had not heard of the IBM VAMP.

Not to completely dump on IBM: IBM does make important peripheral technology.

"Some vice presidents of IBM assert that the speed of light goes just

a little bit faster in Armonk." --An IBM Vice President [yes, it's humor]

Anonymous contribution:

I was in White Plains, and I heard their biggy---the chemist---say

"Supercomputing is just a marketing word."

This is, in fact, also the title of a paper. It's these kinds of comments

which will continue to plague IBM. The phrase does have a little truth to it.

It's also deriviative of Watson's comments about computers in general

from the late 1940s. This group keeps a copy of the texts of Watson's memo

about the performance of the CDC 6600 [then the most powerful supercomputer].

%A Ad Emmen

%A Jaap Hollenberg

%T Supercomputer is just an advertisement word, an interview with

Enrico Clementi

%J Supercomputer

%C Amsterdam

%D July-September, 1986

%P 24-33

%X Never very technical, but interesting reading.

Don't forget that "B" stands for "Business" machines and many people

regard this "marketplace" as outside business machines. The reality is

that the SP2 and many other IBM architectures aren't IBM-370 clones.

The problem created by a comment like

"Supercomputing is just a marketing word"

is that potential customers have a hard time justifying

supercomputer purchases internally.

If you think we are rubbing IBM's face in dirt, we aren't.

We are listing a history based on net discussion. Does IBM have

a supercomputer (currently)? Depends on your perspective.

See: definition of a supercomputer on the earliest panels.

On the other hand, it could be argued that IBM has snubbed potential customers.

Touche.

The following stuff is included because 1) it's frequently mentioned,

2) it's frequently quoted out of context, incomplete, etc. These are

from the published documents:

MEMORANDUMAugust 28, 1963

Memorandum To: Messrs. A. L. Williams

T. V. Learson

H. W. Miller, Jr.

E. R. Piore

O. M. Scott

M. B. Smith

A. K. Watson

Last week CDC 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 PhD., a relatively junior programmer. To

the outsider, the laboratory appeared to be cost conscious, hard

working, and highly motivated.

Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast development

activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry

leadership by letting someone else offer the world's most

powerful computer. At Jenny Lake, I think top priority should

be given to a discussion as to what we are doing wrong and how we

should go about changing it immediately.

T. J. Watson, Jr.

TJW,Jr:jmc

cc: Mr. W. B. McWhirter

Reproduced in A Few Good Men from Univac.

On hearing about this memo:

"It seems Mr. Watson has answered his own question."

--Seymour Cray

# http://cip2.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de:80 80/hyplan/dl4rcg/texte/quotes.col

#This link now appears to be dead.

#I'll remove this link if a suitable replacement is not found in

#a few months

What is the significance of this memo?

--------------------------------------

1) As pointed out by the book "A Few Good Men from Univac:"

The bureaucratic overhead is less in a small intimate organization.

[i.e., communication requiring complete connectivity is roughly an O(n^2)

problem.]

2) It pulls a little bit of a slap at education (PhD). [The presence of

Woz, Jobs, and Gates is some ways makes this less impressive (all rich

men lacking more than two years of college or after making their fortune,

none building supers of course).]

COBOL?

------

People have on occasion asked for a COBOL compiler in this group.

Comp.lang.cobol is a better place to ask.

COBOL-X: mentioned in the STAR-OS manual.

It is difficult to assess the role of the IBM clones: Amdahl and in particular

the major Japanese vendors: Fujitsu, NEC, and Hitachi. Many exist.

IBM will likely continue to assert itself as a "player" in this market.

What does IBM imply?

--------------------

32-bit, byte-oriented (big-endian vs. little-endian debate),

CISC architecture, EBCDIC characters, radix-50 floating point.

IBM Channel I/O rates (3.3-4.3 MB/S).

or

PCs.

Intel or RS6K processor.

I/O: SCSI-Bus, Micro-Channel.

It is easy to challenge this, but it is even easier to confirm these.

See: definition of a supercomputer on the earliest panels.

Are these "super" features?

---------------------------

Generally no.

It should be noted that some communities can do 32-bit work

(fixed-point, image processing is typical). The question then to ask is:

Does 32-bit mode run twice as fast as 64-bit? What happens with

DOUBLE PRECISION declarations? What happens with integers?

Good questions. 8^)

IBM Positives

-------------

The SP/2:

http://ibm.tc.cornell.edu/ibm/pps/doc/

http://lscftp.kgn.ibm.com/pps/vibm/index .html

http://www.tc.cornell.edu/~jeg/config.ht ml