From: Andrew Reilly on
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:16:20 -0800, Robert Myers wrote:

> *Someone* doesn't regard Itanium as a dead issue.

Well, intel finally launched a new one a couple of days ago:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20100208/intel-unleashes-itanium-server-
chip.htm

They claim the delay was re-engineering the front side to be compatible
with Xeons, and talk to DDR3. Still 65nm and 1.73GHz though.

Cheers,

--
Andrew
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn(a)garlic.com> writes:
> That summer, they also installed (single processor) 360/67 for running
> cp67/cms online timesharing in the corporate hdqtrs 360/30 computer
> room. That summer they also moved the duplex 360/67 from boeing
> huntsville to seattle boeing aerospace.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#89 Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#90 Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

360/67 was basically 360/65 with virtual memory hardware ... official
support was suppose to be tss/360 ... lots of people bought them for
that ... but tss/360 ran into lots of problems and many customers
dropped back to use them in purely 360/65 (real memory mode) ... others
ran (virtual machine) cp67.

boeing huntsville had two processor smp 360/67 ... but dropped back to
use them in 360/65 mode. they had gotten machine to use with bunch of
2250 (large vector graphic) displays for computer design kind of work.
the problem was that os/360 had severe storage fragmentation problems
with long running applications (like the 2250 graphic design work). so
boeing did special hack to os/360 to use the 360/67 virtual memory
hardware ... didn't actually do any paging ... just used address
relocation to create the appearance of contiguous storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

2250 was pretty expensive device ... a 2250m1 (attached directly to 360
channel) was about the same price as 2250m4 (2250/1130 computer
combination)
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/2250.html

this mentions 2250 attached to 360 at npg, it doesn't say but that
should be 360/67 cp67 system at npg.
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0711009

they eventually came out with followon replacement called 3250 (which
was outsourced, i think sanders? in NH) ... which was also pretty
expensive.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=849&dat=19771128&id=pZkmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a1QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6107,3530676

there was a less expensive flavor called 3277GA .... which was large
tektronics display with special attachment that hooked into the side of
3277 terminal. some number of 3277ga were used internally by vlsi chip
design operations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270

more expensive displays used by internal vlsi chip design were CALMAs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calma

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: nmm1 on
In article <4b832d52-8fd7-4341-891f-ce7b25c59ffb(a)k41g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>On Feb 10, 8:34=A0pm, Paul Wallich <p...(a)panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just a nit, and the original article is just stenography, but isn't
>> there something wrong with comparing the dollar value of boxes
>> containing a chip with the dollar value of a single chip?
>
>I wouldn't know how to scrub marketing claims if my life depended on
>it. If they've got the balls to put the claim out there, I've got the
>balls to repeat it. Caveat lector. *Someone* doesn't regard Itanium
>as a dead issue.

There are people who don't think that Elvis is dead, too.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
From: Del Cecchi on
Eugene Miya wrote:
> In article <hksvhp$ru5$1(a)usenet01.boi.hp.com>,
> Rick Jones <rick.jones2(a)hp.com> wrote:
>> I may share what I perceive to be your disdain for calling a bunch of
>> systems connected via a network a "supercomputer" but in the case of
>> Avatar, if what I've heard is correct, it was rendered on hardware
>> enough of which was "general purpose" that if the folks who bought it
>> wanted to, could break it up and sell the blades/chassis to people who
>> wanted to do general purpose stuff. So I'm not sure how much of what
>> was used to render Avatar would be "one-off."
>
> The problem for your (say HP's side) is that while the hardware was
> state of the art when say you sold it to a firm: a house, a producer,
> when the film is done, you will be ready to sell the next upgrade.
> This was a problem which killed Osborne as a firm.
>
> At the higher level that's fine for 1 producer/director. Studios
> coordinate multiple films or TV series, attempting to keep all secret.
> You have to have pipelines of multiple graphics units (groups) juggling
> in the air. I was amused by a screening room I was invited into in
> Redwood City (they have 2). They wanted military/govt grade crypto
> between there and their contacts in Los Angeles suburbs. These are not
> investments Studios until recently have been willing to make (I showed a
> brief bit of footage which was done for Alien which also appeared in
> Bladerunner, the fan, who had dinner with Scott recently was surprised).
> It's called show business for a reason. The problem, like publishers, is
> that they (the MPAA) don't the pace of Moore's Law.
>
That is not what killed osborne. What killed osborne was announcing a
better machine that was not in production and freezing the market when
they didn't have cash to cover the interval.

From: Robert Myers on
On Feb 10, 11:25 pm, n...(a)cam.ac.uk wrote:
> In article <4b832d52-8fd7-4341-891f-ce7b25c59...(a)k41g2000yqm.googlegroups..com>,
> Robert Myers  <rbmyers...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Feb 10, 8:34=A0pm, Paul Wallich <p...(a)panix.com> wrote:
>
> >> Just a nit, and the original article is just stenography, but isn't
> >> there something wrong with comparing the dollar value of boxes
> >> containing a chip with the dollar value of a single chip?
>
> >I wouldn't know how to scrub marketing claims if my life depended on
> >it.  If they've got the balls to put the claim out there, I've got the
> >balls to repeat it.  Caveat lector.  *Someone* doesn't regard Itanium
> >as a dead issue.
>
> There are people who don't think that Elvis is dead, too.
>
But they're wrong. Elvis and I regularly meet for a gospel singalong.

Robert.