[cctalk] Re: CDC and IBM Schoonschip

On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 9:54 AM Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: Done on purpose of course :-) I think the code is mostly interesting for historical reasons. It was originally written mostly in COMPASS assembly with the Fortran handling input/output sort of stuff and then translated (in a somewhat unusual manner) into IBM BAL by Hugo Strubbe. Later, when Tini realized that the CDC mainframes were on their way out, he ported Schoonschip to m68k assembly. In fact, he wrote his own m68k toolchain (ie assembler and linker) in order to do so! Tini Veltman is probably best known for his work on dimensional regularization and the Standard Model which led to his Nobel Prize. However, he also had a computing side to him. Of course, he had his own way of doing things .. like not trusting any high level languages. He was apparently quite proud of optimizing his code for the CDC 6600. But tying Schoonschip to the bare metal is probably one of the main reasons it hasn't survived beyond an important historical milestone. - jim -- James T. Liu, Professor of Physics 3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Tel: 734 763-4314 Fax: 734 763-2213 Email: jimliu(a)umich.edu