Re: Chipsandcheese article on the CDC6600

On Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:43:44 +0300, Niklas Holsti
<niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> wrote:

On 2024-07-22 3:05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 21 Jul 2024 22:21:41 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
 

IBM CEO said something to the effect:: How can a team of 24 people,
including the janitor, beat IBM ??

 
 From Watson’s memo:
 
     Last week Control Data had a press conference during which they
     officially announced their 6600 system. I understand that in the
     laboratory developing this system there are only 34 people,
     including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are
     programmers, and only one person has a Ph.D., a relatively junior
     programmer. Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast
     development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our
     industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the
     world’s most powerful computer.

>
Per Wikipedia, Cray's reply was sardonic: "It seems like Mr. Watson has
answered his own question."

While IBM did not appear to understand the wisdom in Cray's remark at
the time - that a large organization can have internal politics and
communications overhead and other things that hamper innovation - it
did _eventually_ learn its lesson.

So when it came time for IBM to make its mark in the new, emerging
field of microcomputers, it had a small team, working in isolation
from the rest of IBM, go and design the IBM Personal Computer in all
its 4.77 MHz 8088 glory.

John Savard