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"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 a
by 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 agoThe 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.