20 Sep
2014
20 Sep
'14
9:24 a.m.
Gordon Bell, 'Father of the Minicomputer,'
Named Recipient of 2014 IEEE
Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
So I was originally going to post that while I whole-heartedly agree that he
deserved the award, I was a bit dubious about the 'Father of the Minicomputer'
thing, because the only early minicomputer I knew of associated with him was
the PDP-11 (which really made minicomputers a Really Big Deal, and is clearly
significant); however, the grouping had attained takeoff speed before it
appeared.
It's a good question which minicomputer was really the first and/or really set
the grouping going. Among the claimants would be the PDP-8 (the detailed
designer of the original PDP-8 being Edson deCastro), which was surely the
first extremely successful minicomputer, and the CDC 160 (designed by Seymour
Cray). Another possibility would be the LINC, designed by Wes Clark (whose
other big claim to fame was suggesting the ARPANET IMP), and Charles Molnar.
Then there's the PDP-5, which was a success, but nowhere near as big a hit as
the PDP-8, although it was the inspiration for the PDP-8. I wasn't sure if I
class the PDP-5 as a minicomputer, though; it was a bit too big (physically)
and expensive. But its architect was.... Gordon Bell! (See Glenn Rifkin,
"Ultimate Entrepreneur", pg. 55.) Edson deCastro was apparently the detail
designer of this one too. Bell was apparently also the architect of the PDP-8.
So it sounds like the title is merited... (And Wikipedia really needs a PDP-5
page. Maybe I'll whip one up...)
Noel
20 Sep
20 Sep
12:53 p.m.
On 9/20/14 9:24 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
I was a bit dubious about the 'Father of the
Minicomputer'
thing, because the only early minicomputer I knew of associated with him was
the PDP-11
http://hampage.hu/pdp-11/birth.html
1:09 p.m.
On Sep 20, 2014, at 3:53 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 9/20/14 9:24 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Interesting. Some small errors in that: the 64 kW disk is the RC11/RS64. It has a sector
size of 32 words. The next one was the RF11, 256 kW. That?s the one that is word
addressable.
The pdp11/memos section of Bitsavers has a very interesting sequence of documents showing
major redirects early on. Never mind the PDP-X; after that, there are a string of PDP-11
documents, including what calls itself a ?final? instruction set spec, that describe
something utterly different, more like a 16-bit PDP-8 (or 16-bit PDP-9? I don?t remember
the -9 well). The next batch is more like the final design but even there you can see a
bunch of major differences. So it looks like it took at least 3 iterations, not counting
the PDP-X, to arrive at the PDP-11 architecture.
I guess you could say that became a DEC tradition. VAX seems to have taken fewer tries,
though even there you can see memos that show an early approach that wasn?t what we ended
up with. DEC RISC took three tries (Titan, Prism, Alpha), and in that case all three were
built as real hardware rather than being abandoned while still in the paper stage.
paul
I was a bit dubious about the 'Father of the
Minicomputer'
thing, because the only early minicomputer I knew of associated with him was
the PDP-11
http://hampage.hu/pdp-11/birth.html 
2:13 p.m.
Not sure if everyone here already owns a copy, but the book "Computer
Engineering: A DEC view of hardware systems design" by Bell et al. offers a
really nice look at the historical origins of all the various PDP lines.
Plenty of cheap copies to be had with paper books going out of style
amongst the majority :) The copy I picked up second-hand actually appears
to have come from the hallowed halls of Xerox PARC (unfortunately no big
names on the date due slip...) Another very interesting Bell et al. text
that I enjoy is "Computer Structures: Principles and Examples" though it is
(very) much less DEC-centric.
Best,
Sean
On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
On Sep 20, 2014, at 3:53 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
Interesting. Some small errors in that: the 64 kW disk is the RC11/RS64.
It has a sector size of 32 words. The next one was the RF11, 256 kW.
That?s the one that is word addressable.
The pdp11/memos section of Bitsavers has a very interesting sequence of
documents showing major redirects early on. Never mind the PDP-X; after
that, there are a string of PDP-11 documents, including what calls itself a
?final? instruction set spec, that describe something utterly different,
more like a 16-bit PDP-8 (or 16-bit PDP-9? I don?t remember the -9 well).
The next batch is more like the final design but even there you can see a
bunch of major differences. So it looks like it took at least 3
iterations, not counting the PDP-X, to arrive at the PDP-11 architecture.
I guess you could say that became a DEC tradition. VAX seems to have
taken fewer tries, though even there you can see memos that show an early
approach that wasn?t what we ended up with. DEC RISC took three tries
(Titan, Prism, Alpha), and in that case all three were built as real
hardware rather than being abandoned while still in the paper stage.
paul
On 9/20/14 9:24 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> I was a bit dubious about the 'Father of the Minicomputer'
> thing, because the only early minicomputer I knew of associated with
him was
the
PDP-11
http://hampage.hu/pdp-11/birth.html
2:17 p.m.
On Sep 20, 2014, at 5:13 PM, Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu> wrote:
Not sure if everyone here already owns a copy, but the
book "Computer
Engineering: A DEC view of hardware systems design" by Bell et al. offers a
really nice look at the historical origins of all the various PDP lines.
Plenty of cheap copies to be had with paper books going out of style
amongst the majority :) The copy I picked up second-hand actually appears
to have come from the hallowed halls of Xerox PARC (unfortunately no big
names on the date due slip...) Another very interesting Bell et al. text
that I enjoy is "Computer Structures: Principles and Examples" though it is
(very) much less DEC-centric.
The square book... that is a nice broad overview of lots of different computer
architectures up to the 1970s. It nicely demonstrates how many different ways people
found to design stuff, and why.
paul
3:07 p.m.
Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu> writes:
Not sure if everyone here already owns a copy, but the
book "Computer
Engineering: A DEC view of hardware systems design" by Bell et
al. offers a really nice look at the historical origins of all the
various PDP lines.
Gordon Bell has made the full text available on his web site:
https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/Computer_Engineering/
--
Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> <http://offog.org/>
3:51 p.m.
In article <CAA43vkV2yvOTEnieZKxejrw1C04CWfmDxr7GYHhg2s=MynTBgg at mail.gmail.com>,
Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu> writes:
Not sure if everyone here already owns a copy, but the
book "Computer
Engineering: A DEC view of hardware systems design" by Bell et al. offers a
really nice look at the historical origins of all the various PDP lines.
The book is on bitsavers and is a great read.
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/Bell-ComputerEngineering.pdf>
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book
<http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://ComputerGraphicsMuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://LegalizeAdulthood.wordpress.com>
21 Sep
21 Sep
2:06 p.m.
Paul Koning wrote:
....DEC RISC took three tries (Titan, Prism, Alpha),
and in that
case all three were built as real hardware rather than being
abandoned while still in the paper stage.
Prism is what Cutler renamed the "SAFE" (Streamlined Architecture for
Fast Execution) RISC machine project after stealing it from Alan
Kotok's Advanced Development group in Marlborough MA. The *MAJOR*
change (at first) was that they renamed all the data types to full VAX
compatibility/stupidity. ie; "16" became "word", 32 became
"long" and
64 became "quad". I seem to recall some other changes: One of SAFE's
registers was always zero, and Prism moved it to the other end of the
register file. The wikipedia entry says Prism eventually shrank to a
32-bit machine.
We were aware of Titan (a Unix workstation), and were aiming at
64-bits with VAX data compatibility, running VMS.
I was in the working with Al Blackington (who had a low -- two digit?
badge number) on "VAST" a VAX Assembly language translator, which took
output from the VAX assembler after macro expansion, and eliminated
all the unused CISC side effects.
I was doing an instruction scheduler (based on work by Dave Orbits?)
after reading the papers from Fisher's VLIW project at Yale that
became Multiflow. Kotok had a very open management style and forwarded
lots of emails, so we all got to see the train comming at us...
I wasn't aware that Prism ever generated hardware, but I left DEC not
longer afterwards....
Phil
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
ats＠offog.org -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
legalize＠xmission.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
phil＠ultimate.com -
scaron＠umich.edu