Re: Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors

According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid>:

On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:18:56 GMT, Anton Ertl wrote:
>

But the Cray-1 is not an improvement on the Model 195.

>
The Cray-1 was widely regarded as the fastest computer in the world, when it came out. Cruising speed of something over 80 megaflops, hitting bursts of about 120.

Its main practical improvement was that you could get two Crays for the price
of one 360/195.  (Not exactly, but close enough.)

IBM did try to compete in the “supercomputer” field for a while longer, but I think by about ten years later, it had given up.

IBM had tried to make computers very fast by making them very
complicated. STRETCH was fantastically complex for something built out
of individual transistors. The /91 and /195 had instrucion queues and
reservation stations and loop mode. Cray went in the opposite
direction, making a much simpler computer where each individual bit
down to the chips and the wires, were as fast as possible.

In many ways it was a preview of RISC.