6 ms·

IBM 7030 Stretch

59 points by slater 7y ago

olliej 7y ago
Oh neat, it was 64bit! I wonder if anyone has made an emulator for it yet?
- shakna 7y ago
  There's some tools and documentation gathered at [0] which would help, but last I heard they hadn't managed to get a hold of the 7030, but the 7090 shares a few hardware characteristics. Apparently it isn't an easy system to emulate. [0] http://members.optushome.com.au/intaemul/INDEX.HTM http://members.optushome.com.au/intaemul/INDEX.HTM
- forinti 7y ago
  It seems wasteful to me since it only had 2MB of RAM. It does say that instructions could be 32 or 64 bits long, but I would guess having 16 or 32 bit instructions would let you pack more instructions into memory.
  - olliej 7y ago
    Well 2mbit of ram was (at the time) a huge amount of ram. But I suspect it was so much “we want to address petabytes of ram” but rather “we are doing numerics that require 64 bits of accuracy”
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That's not 'only' that's absolutely mind warping huge for the time when it was made. The physical dimensions of that memory were such that you could see the individual bits as tiny little ferrite cores.
rusteh1 7y ago
Weight: 70,000 pounds (35 short tons; 32 t) Power: 100 kW[1] @ 110 V Incredible!
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Consider an esp32 is probably faster in low power mode
Nr7 7y ago
"PC World magazine named Stretch one of the biggest project management failures in IT history." It would be interesting to know more about this. The Wikipedia article doesn't really go into any detail and neither does the source article. For example, there's a comment about having to lower the clock speeds but it doesn't say why this decision had to be made.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  The germanium transistors used in Stretch simply weren't fast enough to meet the paper spec. The architecture couldn't do much to work around this. Cray at CDC used the newer and faster silicon transistors in the 6600. So did IBM's later System/360. In fact Cray funded the development of the fast silicon transistors at Fairchild with a $500k contract. https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/silicon-transistor-exceeds-germanium-speed/ https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/silicon-transi... IBM made the classic corporate mistake - sales over-promised and then told engineering to build something that couldn't be built. So Stretch became an involuntary R&D project instead of a commercial product.
Taniwha 7y ago
Famously the first (only?) computer that was repaired with an oil change: "Of course, Stretch came originally with an oil-cooled core memory system. Jack Worlton of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) recalls a problem experienced during the acceptance test phase, when there was a transient memory error in the cores. The engineers worked for days to remedy the error but were unable to figure out what was going wrong. They finally hit upon the problem. As Worlton explains it, there was a piece of solder loose in the oil bath, and because the oil was constantly in circulation the solder would move and attach itself onto a core and cause an error. Then it would move and lodge onto a different core and cause an error there. It was the only error I know of that was corrected in a machine by giving it an oil change, Worlton quips." from : http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/reports/p018.htm http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/reports/p...
notacoward 7y ago
My wife's parents met while working on system software for Stretch. From the stories they've told it sounds like it was quite a beast even by the standards of its day. IIRC, the I/O processor was incapable of running independently, so programmers had to add special instructions in the middle of their own code to give it cycles. Ick.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That's a cooperative synchronous bus, something quite common at the time. It's a bit like a 'yield' instruction in a cooperative multitasking environment.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    It's a bit more than that. There's usually quite a bit of flexibility in when to yield, and the consequences might not be that bad. These instructions had to be issued in a very timely way, lest the whole system would come crashing down. Was it unique in that regard? Perhaps not, though "common" is a bit misleading when the computing landscape at the time was so small and fragmented. The difference is that other architectures might have shared one or two misfeatures with Stretch out of unfortunate necessity, but the Stretch designers seemed determined to collect the entire set and then expand on it. I'd guess that, like some projects I've been on, it was a case of one powerful or well connected group of people pushing as much complexity as possible onto another. So it's probably related to the "project management failure" sub-thread.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Requiring periodic yields in user code strikes me as indicating a dedication to simplicity. It was no great burden to add a few instructions to a program, and it apparently saved them from needing to implement a forced, transparent context switch mechanism.
      - notacoward 7y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding what we're talking about. This wasn't in user code; it was in the OS ("MCP") itself. It wasn't a few instructions that could be placed at convenient points in the control flow; it was every N instructions when I/O was active. Among other difficulties, that meant accounting for that had to be part of even minor code changes. The people actually doing it certainly didn't think it was simple or "no great burden" as you suggest. Simple would have been an I/O unit that could run independently of the main CPU, as in practically every machine designed since - including the 360 which was designed by the same person. Even he apparently recanted that decision. So yeah, it's "a bit" like yield, but only in the sense that a Cessna and an F-22 are "a bit" alike. I've done low-level work on multiple RISC processors that had all sorts of exposed-pipeline and delegated-to-software functionality (e.g. TLB handling on MIPS) in the name of simplicity, and I've even enjoyed it somewhat, but I'm still glad I never had to work on anything as "raw" as Stretch.
oofoe 7y ago
STRETCH also makes an appearance in one of the classic Alfred Bester (the writer, not the telepath) short stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Up_There_Likes_Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Up_There_Likes_Me Well worth a read if you can find it -- the Wikipedia summary is rather spoiler-y and doesn't capture the charm of the story. Mr. Bester worked in broadcast television at the time he wrote it and there is some amusing commentary about ad trends of the day.
crispyambulance 7y ago
Speaking of bad-ass computers, the 7030 was surpassed in speed in 1964 by the CDC-6600, designed by Seymour Cray. It had incredibly cool-looking DUAL circular displays and a minimalist console keyboard built into the table... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#/media/File:CDC_6600.jc.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#/media/File:CDC_6600....
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Control Data, or it will control you. Beautiful machine, impressive plumbing in the right hand side cabinet as well.
- watersb 7y ago
  Friend of mine was sysop on the CDC-6600 at University of Texas in Austin. He has some good stories. Says he learned how to create operating systems by hours of watching the data flow on those tubes.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  I programmed one of those in Wirth Pascal, as a freshman at Oregon State University in 1979. Then they retired it, installing a Honeywell running Multics. Then, they replaced that with a Vax 750. It was a step down in awesomeness each time. The most popular parts of the 6600, as souvenirs, were the smoked-glass cabinet doors.
equalunique 7y ago
The creation of this machine is referenced in a book that's often cited here - The Mythical Man-Month - just finished reading it today. It's quite insightful for a book that's draws upon experiences from software projects as far back as the 1950s.
cptnapalm 7y ago
The next chapter from where I am in IBM's Early Computers is on the Strech project meaning that I could be wealth of information if I read faster.
russellbeattie 7y ago
I was just reading "A History of Pi" which mentions this computer and its successor: "π was computed to 250,000 decimal places on an IBM 7030 at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique in Paris in February 1966, and a year later, in February 1967, a CDC 6600 was programmed by J. Gilloud and J. Filliatre, at the same institution, to yield 500,000 decimal places. The program was again based on Störmer’s formula (2) and the Shanks-Wrench method for checking the digits; the running time was 28 hours and 10 minutes (of which 1 hour and 35 minutes were used for conversion), and an additional 16 hours and 35 minutes were needed for the check. These quarter- and half-million digit values of π were published in reports of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique in Paris."
ncmncm 7y ago
Stretch and the 6600 both had popcount instructions that x86 finally got in SSSE3, only ten years ago. This is sometimes interpreted as indicating NSA interest in the machine.

IBM 7030 Stretch

59 points by slater 7y ago

olliej 7y ago

Oh neat, it was 64bit! I wonder if anyone has made an emulator for it yet?

shakna 7y ago
There's some tools and documentation gathered at [0] which would help, but last I heard they hadn't managed to get a hold of the 7030, but the 7090 shares a few hardware characteristics. Apparently it isn't an easy system to emulate. [0] http://members.optushome.com.au/intaemul/INDEX.HTM http://members.optushome.com.au/intaemul/INDEX.HTM
forinti 7y ago
It seems wasteful to me since it only had 2MB of RAM. It does say that instructions could be 32 or 64 bits long, but I would guess having 16 or 32 bit instructions would let you pack more instructions into memory.
- olliej 7y ago
  Well 2mbit of ram was (at the time) a huge amount of ram. But I suspect it was so much “we want to address petabytes of ram” but rather “we are doing numerics that require 64 bits of accuracy”
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That's not 'only' that's absolutely mind warping huge for the time when it was made. The physical dimensions of that memory were such that you could see the individual bits as tiny little ferrite cores.

rusteh1 7y ago

Weight: 70,000 pounds (35 short tons; 32 t) Power: 100 kW[1] @ 110 V Incredible!

agumonkey 7y ago
Consider an esp32 is probably faster in low power mode

Nr7 7y ago

"PC World magazine named Stretch one of the biggest project management failures in IT history." It would be interesting to know more about this. The Wikipedia article doesn't really go into any detail and neither does the source article. For example, there's a comment about having to lower the clock speeds but it doesn't say why this decision had to be made.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
The germanium transistors used in Stretch simply weren't fast enough to meet the paper spec. The architecture couldn't do much to work around this. Cray at CDC used the newer and faster silicon transistors in the 6600. So did IBM's later System/360. In fact Cray funded the development of the fast silicon transistors at Fairchild with a $500k contract. https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/silicon-transistor-exceeds-germanium-speed/ https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/silicon-transi... IBM made the classic corporate mistake - sales over-promised and then told engineering to build something that couldn't be built. So Stretch became an involuntary R&D project instead of a commercial product.

Taniwha 7y ago

Famously the first (only?) computer that was repaired with an oil change: "Of course, Stretch came originally with an oil-cooled core memory system. Jack Worlton of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) recalls a problem experienced during the acceptance test phase, when there was a transient memory error in the cores. The engineers worked for days to remedy the error but were unable to figure out what was going wrong. They finally hit upon the problem. As Worlton explains it, there was a piece of solder loose in the oil bath, and because the oil was constantly in circulation the solder would move and attach itself onto a core and cause an error. Then it would move and lodge onto a different core and cause an error there. It was the only error I know of that was corrected in a machine by giving it an oil change, Worlton quips." from : http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/reports/p018.htm http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/reports/p...

notacoward 7y ago

My wife's parents met while working on system software for Stretch. From the stories they've told it sounds like it was quite a beast even by the standards of its day. IIRC, the I/O processor was incapable of running independently, so programmers had to add special instructions in the middle of their own code to give it cycles. Ick.

jacquesm 7y ago
That's a cooperative synchronous bus, something quite common at the time. It's a bit like a 'yield' instruction in a cooperative multitasking environment.
- notacoward 7y ago
  It's a bit more than that. There's usually quite a bit of flexibility in when to yield, and the consequences might not be that bad. These instructions had to be issued in a very timely way, lest the whole system would come crashing down. Was it unique in that regard? Perhaps not, though "common" is a bit misleading when the computing landscape at the time was so small and fragmented. The difference is that other architectures might have shared one or two misfeatures with Stretch out of unfortunate necessity, but the Stretch designers seemed determined to collect the entire set and then expand on it. I'd guess that, like some projects I've been on, it was a case of one powerful or well connected group of people pushing as much complexity as possible onto another. So it's probably related to the "project management failure" sub-thread.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Requiring periodic yields in user code strikes me as indicating a dedication to simplicity. It was no great burden to add a few instructions to a program, and it apparently saved them from needing to implement a forced, transparent context switch mechanism.
    - notacoward 7y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding what we're talking about. This wasn't in user code; it was in the OS ("MCP") itself. It wasn't a few instructions that could be placed at convenient points in the control flow; it was every N instructions when I/O was active. Among other difficulties, that meant accounting for that had to be part of even minor code changes. The people actually doing it certainly didn't think it was simple or "no great burden" as you suggest. Simple would have been an I/O unit that could run independently of the main CPU, as in practically every machine designed since - including the 360 which was designed by the same person. Even he apparently recanted that decision. So yeah, it's "a bit" like yield, but only in the sense that a Cessna and an F-22 are "a bit" alike. I've done low-level work on multiple RISC processors that had all sorts of exposed-pipeline and delegated-to-software functionality (e.g. TLB handling on MIPS) in the name of simplicity, and I've even enjoyed it somewhat, but I'm still glad I never had to work on anything as "raw" as Stretch.

oofoe 7y ago

STRETCH also makes an appearance in one of the classic Alfred Bester (the writer, not the telepath) short stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Up_There_Likes_Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Up_There_Likes_Me Well worth a read if you can find it -- the Wikipedia summary is rather spoiler-y and doesn't capture the charm of the story. Mr. Bester worked in broadcast television at the time he wrote it and there is some amusing commentary about ad trends of the day.

crispyambulance 7y ago

Speaking of bad-ass computers, the 7030 was surpassed in speed in 1964 by the CDC-6600, designed by Seymour Cray. It had incredibly cool-looking DUAL circular displays and a minimalist console keyboard built into the table... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#/media/File:CDC_6600.jc.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#/media/File:CDC_6600....

jacquesm 7y ago
Control Data, or it will control you. Beautiful machine, impressive plumbing in the right hand side cabinet as well.
watersb 7y ago
Friend of mine was sysop on the CDC-6600 at University of Texas in Austin. He has some good stories. Says he learned how to create operating systems by hours of watching the data flow on those tubes.
ncmncm 7y ago
I programmed one of those in Wirth Pascal, as a freshman at Oregon State University in 1979. Then they retired it, installing a Honeywell running Multics. Then, they replaced that with a Vax 750. It was a step down in awesomeness each time. The most popular parts of the 6600, as souvenirs, were the smoked-glass cabinet doors.

equalunique 7y ago

The creation of this machine is referenced in a book that's often cited here - The Mythical Man-Month - just finished reading it today. It's quite insightful for a book that's draws upon experiences from software projects as far back as the 1950s.

cptnapalm 7y ago

The next chapter from where I am in IBM's Early Computers is on the Strech project meaning that I could be wealth of information if I read faster.

russellbeattie 7y ago

I was just reading "A History of Pi" which mentions this computer and its successor: "π was computed to 250,000 decimal places on an IBM 7030 at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique in Paris in February 1966, and a year later, in February 1967, a CDC 6600 was programmed by J. Gilloud and J. Filliatre, at the same institution, to yield 500,000 decimal places. The program was again based on Störmer’s formula (2) and the Shanks-Wrench method for checking the digits; the running time was 28 hours and 10 minutes (of which 1 hour and 35 minutes were used for conversion), and an additional 16 hours and 35 minutes were needed for the check. These quarter- and half-million digit values of π were published in reports of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique in Paris."

ncmncm 7y ago

Stretch and the 6600 both had popcount instructions that x86 finally got in SSSE3, only ten years ago. This is sometimes interpreted as indicating NSA interest in the machine.