Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!karl From: karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: IBM Stretch Summary: CDC 6600 had 25X better price/performance than the Stretch Message-ID: <2308@sugar.UUCP> Date: 14 Jul 88 12:34:20 GMT References: <28200172@urbsdc> <11458@steinmetz.ge.com> <4480@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX Lines: 24 At the Boston Computer Museum, there's a little "shrine" to Seymour Cray, with a quote attributed to Mr. Watson that goes something like 'how can this band of upstarts build a computer, with only 35 people, that runs five times faster than our fastest machine and costs one fifth as much?' There's a movie about it (at the museum), too. Brigham Young University had one and ran it for years and years. In article <4480@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, sxr@purdue.UUCP writes: > There was no 360 model 97. IBM did introduce a model 90 series of > very high performance 360 systems, at least in part to help it compete > with Control Data. This was the basis of an anti-trust suit by CDC > against IBM. IBM built and delivered a few model 91 systems, and at > least one model 95. Yeah, the 360/90 was the machine that IBM was more or less forced to build. As I understand it, IBM didn't think there was a scientific supercomputer market and was quite surprised when CDC received a bunch of orders for the then-new 6600. Consequently, IBM announced a vaporware product, a high speed scientific supercomputer, the 360/90, causing most 6600 orders to be cancelled, prompting CDC's antitrust suit against IBM. IBM settled out of court with CDC and did finally build the 90, but it was years late and did not achieve its original stated performance. -- -- karl@sugar.uu.net aka uunet!sugar!karl