Interesting article in Spectrum about IBM's System/360

[Jon Elson]

On 04/12/2019 04:14 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> On 4/12/19 11:15 AM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
>> The article says:
>>
>> Poughkeepsie’s engineers were close to completing work on a set of four
>>> computers known as the 8000s that were compatible with the 7000s.
> My tendency has been to consider 7000 xeries machines as transistorized
> 700 series.  Certainly that applies in the case of the 7090.
>
Well, to an extent.  Yes, the 709x was able to run 709 
programs, and had a few extensions.
But, really, the hardware was VERY advanced.  The 7094 was a 
real lightning fast machine, for the technology available at 
the time. In fact, it was faster than most of the 360 line 
that replaced it. But, the funny thing was, it didn't 
multitask well, and so you could only run one program at a 
time.  And, spooling input and output to tapes slowed it 
badly (although not as badly as reading cards and printing 
directly would have).  So, while fast, it didn't run 
efficiently.
Slower 360's could keep busy by multiprocessing, and thus 
get more work done.

Jon