I find the comment "for a sufficiently large input data set it will outperform most competing technologies" most interesting, and dated.
It beat competing technologies of the day, but not of today. Consider that a fast card sorter could process about 2,000 cards a minute, or even if it could process 20,000 cards a minute, that works out to about 2,666 bytes a second for the 2,000 card case or 26,666 bytes a second for the fictional 20,000 card case. Syncsort MFX typically will process over 100,000,000 bytes per second, depending on the input and output devices as they tend to be the limiting factors. CPU time may not be linear based on a number of factors, but I can buy more processors, I cannot buy more wall clock time. The card sorter was the speed demon of its day, but it was replaced for a reason. Chris Blaicher Principal Software Engineer, Software Development Syncsort Incorporated 50 Tice Boulevard, Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677 P: 201-930-8260 | M: 512-627-3803 E: [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Friday, August 30, 2013 5:29 PM To: MVS List Server 2 Subject: Re: Sortlessness? On 2013-08-30 16:04, zMan wrote: > If you need one, there's always > http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Model-83-Punch-Card-Sorter-/300954726197?p > t=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item46124caf35 > And it operates in time linear with respect to the size of the input data set, implying that for a sufficiently large input data set it will outperform most competing technologies. -- gil
