m42tom-ibmm...@yahoo.com (Tom Marchant) writes: > Dr. Amdahl was the chief architect of the System/360. He left IBM > and started Amdahl corporation because he wanted to extend the > series with a higher performance processor and IBM did not think that > it would be marketable. And BTW, it was not a "copy". It was a > compatible processor, but it was implemented differently.
during the ill-fated Future System effort ... anything that smacked of internal competition was killed ... resulted in 370 product pipeline going dry ... which is attributed with allowing clone manufactures to gain market foothold. in the wake of Future System demise there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 product pipeline ... with 3033 going on in parallel with 3081/370xa effort. The 3033 started out as 168 wiring diagram mapped to 20% faster chips ... which also had 10 times circuits/chip (with only 10 percent being used) ... however, there was eventually some redesign before 3033 shipped to better utilize higher density on-chip ... eventually resulting in being 50% faster. This talks about 3081 using some of the FS technology resulting in circuits/mip (and therefor manufacturing costs) being significant higher than clone processors: http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm other details about FS mentioned here (including the FS failure casting dark shadow over the corporation for decades) http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html there are claims that Amdahl knew nothing about the FS effort (occuring after he left). however he gave a talk at MIT in large auditorium in the early 70s on his new company. During the talk he was asked how he convinced investors to fund his company. He said something about customers had already invested couple hundred billion in 360-based software and even if IBM were to completely walk away from 360 (could be considered a veiled reference to FS), that was large enough install base to keep him in business through the end of the century. -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
