Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
Hi Dale, Thanks for posting this interesting piece of history. My non-PX initiation into PX was through DEC too. On a summer internship in 1996 after my junior year, I landed up at this institute which had just received their new DEC ALPHA2000. My project was to write up a C code (I had recently finished with PASCAL and wanted to try out something else) to read all the PDB CD-ROMs (that's how they were distributed back then, at least in India), extract out the parts of the loop regions from the coordinate files and build up a library of loop regions for modeling. There was hardly anyone using the computer at that time and so I got almost exclusive use of it for 2 months. (The previous summer I had been learning molecular dynamics simulations and theory to model the folding of a peptide under different dielectric environment, to simulate a cytoplasmic hydrophilic vs. membrane hydrophobic environment using another 2 legacy items: BIOSYM's INSIGHT&DISCOVER running on a SG...I was driven after recently watching Jurassic Park and knowing that a lot of the graphics had been created on SGs). Too bad that they lost out to the competition despite all their innovations. I hope he and his company will be remembered for all their achievements. Regards, -Debanu. From: Dale Tronrud mailto:det...@uoxray.uoregon.edu>> Date: Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 11:47 PM Subject: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday To: CCP4BB@jiscmail.ac.uk<mailto:CCP4BB@jiscmail.ac.uk> I see in the news that Ken Olsen has died. Although he was not a crystallographer I think we should stop for a moment to remember the profound impact the company that this man founded had on our field. My first experience in a crystallography lab was as an undergraduate in M. Sundaralingam's lab in Madison Wisconsin. While I never had the opportunity to use them, his two diffractometers were controlled by the ubiquitous PDP-8 computers. I had more experience with his main computer, which was either a PDP-11/34 or 35 (Ethan help me out!). This was connected to a Vector General graphics display running software called UWVG. Having the least stature in the lab I got the midnight to 4am time slot for model building. The computer took about 10 minutes to compute and contour each block of map, covering about three residues. While waiting I would crawl under the DECwriter and nap. The computer would stop rattling when the map was up and that would wake me. When I joined the Matthews lab in Oregon they had a VAX 11/780. What an amazing machine! It had 1 MB of RAM and could run a million instructions in a second. It only took 48 hours to run a cycle of refinement with PROLSQ, that is, if no one else used the computer. These specs don't sound like much but this computer was really a revolution for computational crystallography. That a single lab could own a computer of such power was unheard of before this. It wasn't just that the computer had so much RAM (We later got it up to its max of 4 MB.) but the advent of virtual memory made program design so much easier. You could simply define an array of 100,000 elements and not have to worry about finding where in memory, mixed in with the operating system, utility programs, and other users' software, you could find an unused block that big. Digital didn't invent virtual memory, but the VAX made it achievable for regular crystallographers. Through most of the 1980's you didn't have to worry about getting your code to run on other computers - Everyone had access to a VAX. In the 1990's DEC came out with the alpha CPU chip which really broke ground for performance. These things screamed when in came to running crystallographic software. In 1999 the lab bought several of the 666 MHz models. It was about four years before Intel came out with a chip that would match these alphas on my crystallography benchmark and they had to be clocked at over 2 GHz to do it. Yes, Digital lost out in the competition of the marketplace, and Ken Olsen was pushed out of the company well before the end. But what a ride it was. What great computers they were and what great science was done on them! Dale Tronrud
Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
Dear Jacob, Regarding your second question, I stumbled across a relevant article on Wikipedia recently: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth Cheers, David. On 9 Feb 2011 13:53, "Jacob Keller" wrote: > 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 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: rob...@strubi.ox.ac.uk Tel: (+44) - 1865 - 287783 >>and rob...@esnouf.comFax: (+44) - 1865 - 287547 >> > > > > -- > *** > Jacob Pearson Keller > Northwestern University > Medical Scientist Training Program > cel: 773.608.9185 > email: j-kell...@northwestern.edu > ***
Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
On Tuesday, February 08, 2011 11:47:04 pm Dale Tronrud wrote: > I see in the news that Ken Olsen has died. Although he was > not a crystallographer I think we should stop for a moment to > remember the profound impact the company that this man founded > had on our field. > > My first experience in a crystallography lab was as an undergraduate > in M. Sundaralingam's lab in Madison Wisconsin. While I never had > the opportunity to use them, his two diffractometers were controlled > by the ubiquitous PDP-8 computers. I had more experience with his > main computer, which was either a PDP-11/34 or 35 > (Ethan help me out!). http://skuld.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/graphics/madgraph/pdp11.html > This was connected to a Vector General graphics display running software > called UWVG. http://skuld.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/graphics/madgraph/madgraph.html > Having the least stature in the lab I got the midnight > to 4am time slot for model building. The computer took about 10 > minutes to compute and contour each block of map, covering about > three residues. While waiting I would crawl under the DECwriter and > nap. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Decwriter.jpg Ah, Memory Lane! Ethan > The computer would stop rattling when the map was up and that > would wake me. > > When I joined the Matthews lab in Oregon they had a VAX 11/780. > What an amazing machine! It had 1 MB of RAM and could run a million > instructions in a second. It only took 48 hours to run a cycle of > refinement with PROLSQ, that is, if no one else used the computer. > These specs don't sound like much but this computer was really a > revolution for computational crystallography. That a single lab > could own a computer of such power was unheard of before this. > It wasn't just that the computer had so much RAM (We later got it > up to its max of 4 MB.) but the advent of virtual memory made > program design so much easier. You could simply define an array > of 100,000 elements and not have to worry about finding where in > memory, mixed in with the operating system, utility programs, and > other users' software, you could find an unused block that big. > > Digital didn't invent virtual memory, but the VAX made it > achievable for regular crystallographers. Through most of the 1980's > you didn't have to worry about getting your code to run on other > computers - Everyone had access to a VAX. > > In the 1990's DEC came out with the alpha CPU chip which really > broke ground for performance. These things screamed when in came > to running crystallographic software. In 1999 the lab bought > several of the 666 MHz models. It was about four years before > Intel came out with a chip that would match these alphas on my > crystallography benchmark and they had to be clocked at over 2 GHz > to do it. > > Yes, Digital lost out in the competition of the marketplace, and > Ken Olsen was pushed out of the company well before the end. But > what a ride it was. What great computers they were and what great > science was done on them! > > Dale Tronrud > -- Ethan A Merritt Biomolecular Structure Center, K-428 Health Sciences Bldg University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742
Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
Hi Jacob, On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Jacob Keller wrote: 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? This assumes that the process stays running on the same machine. If you checkpoint it and migrate it to faster machine(s) as they become available, you may finish earlier. This depends on how processing throughput for the particular problem evolves between now and now + 8 years. If you choose to re-code/re-optimise to take full advantage of newer machines, the time involved in doing that must be factored in as well: that could be a fully-fledged research project in its own right. Regards, Peter. -- Peter Keller Tel.: +44 (0)1223 353033 Global Phasing Ltd., Fax.: +44 (0)1223 366889 Sheraton House, Castle Park, Cambridge CB3 0AX United Kingdom
Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
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 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: rob...@strubi.ox.ac.uk Tel: (+44) - 1865 - 287783 > and rob...@esnouf.com Fax: (+44) - 1865 - 287547 > -- *** Jacob Pearson Keller Northwestern University Medical Scientist Training Program cel: 773.608.9185 email: j-kell...@northwestern.edu ***
Re: [ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
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: rob...@strubi.ox.ac.uk Tel: (+44) - 1865 - 287783 and rob...@esnouf.comFax: (+44) - 1865 - 287547
[ccp4bb] Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Died Sunday
I see in the news that Ken Olsen has died. Although he was not a crystallographer I think we should stop for a moment to remember the profound impact the company that this man founded had on our field. My first experience in a crystallography lab was as an undergraduate in M. Sundaralingam's lab in Madison Wisconsin. While I never had the opportunity to use them, his two diffractometers were controlled by the ubiquitous PDP-8 computers. I had more experience with his main computer, which was either a PDP-11/34 or 35 (Ethan help me out!). This was connected to a Vector General graphics display running software called UWVG. Having the least stature in the lab I got the midnight to 4am time slot for model building. The computer took about 10 minutes to compute and contour each block of map, covering about three residues. While waiting I would crawl under the DECwriter and nap. The computer would stop rattling when the map was up and that would wake me. When I joined the Matthews lab in Oregon they had a VAX 11/780. What an amazing machine! It had 1 MB of RAM and could run a million instructions in a second. It only took 48 hours to run a cycle of refinement with PROLSQ, that is, if no one else used the computer. These specs don't sound like much but this computer was really a revolution for computational crystallography. That a single lab could own a computer of such power was unheard of before this. It wasn't just that the computer had so much RAM (We later got it up to its max of 4 MB.) but the advent of virtual memory made program design so much easier. You could simply define an array of 100,000 elements and not have to worry about finding where in memory, mixed in with the operating system, utility programs, and other users' software, you could find an unused block that big. Digital didn't invent virtual memory, but the VAX made it achievable for regular crystallographers. Through most of the 1980's you didn't have to worry about getting your code to run on other computers - Everyone had access to a VAX. In the 1990's DEC came out with the alpha CPU chip which really broke ground for performance. These things screamed when in came to running crystallographic software. In 1999 the lab bought several of the 666 MHz models. It was about four years before Intel came out with a chip that would match these alphas on my crystallography benchmark and they had to be clocked at over 2 GHz to do it. Yes, Digital lost out in the competition of the marketplace, and Ken Olsen was pushed out of the company well before the end. But what a ride it was. What great computers they were and what great science was done on them! Dale Tronrud
