25 Jan
2017
25 Jan
'17
9:39 a.m.
On 01/25/2017 12:19 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 01/24/2017 10:01 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Well, of course. If you look at the design of some of the
last gasps of the tube generation like the Bendix G15, you
will see what incredible hoops they had to jump through to
make a viable product. Or, look at SAGE, which filled an
enormous building with walls of tube-encrusted cabinets.
Transistors and core memory really changed the landscape
completely. On the other hand, computers like the LINC were
quite useful with a really modest number of transistors,
certainly no more than 1000 or so, while the 7070 used 30,000!
Jon
And, the 7074 was a serious computer, given the
vintage. Either 4 or
6 us core cycle time was QUITE good in 1961 or so. 10 us
instruction execution time was pretty decent.
I find the whole period amazing.
Consider that the 709 was introduced
in mid 1958. It's only 6 years to the S/360. It seems that when
transistor manufacture matured enough, the floodgates really opened.
After 1958, nobody but developing or Warsaw pact countries even
considered vacuum tube computing.