3 ms·

The 3081 processor took 23kw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_308X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_308X Which is like 100 amps at 230V so you would need se

The 3081 processor took 23kw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_308X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_308X Which is like 100 amps at 230V so you would need several sockets to get that much power. Just getting the machine into the room looos like a challenge.

ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
That sounds like a lot. I'd be surprised if it didn't just use three-phase. Given the power requirements, heat, and noise, you'd probably want to run it in the garage anyway.
- PaulHoule 10mo ago
  What's funny is that I never actually felt it was hot in a datacenter that hosted a mainframe, I think because they were water cooled and also not packed in that tight. Circa 2005 I would regularly go to the data center on the 7th floor of Rhodes hall [1] and it had a mainframe (cool, but it might have been CMOS instead of bipolar) and huge amounts of rack space devoted to RS-6000, SGI, SPARC and other legacy RISC servers and just a few racks of x86 servers which felt a lot hotter both from radiant heat in the front and hot air blowing out the back because they were packed in tight -- three racks of modern servers would outpower that old CMOS mainframe although of course they do a lot more. [1] I work on the 6th now but never go to the data center
  - B1FIDO 10mo ago
    I once worked for an ISP where our routers and servers were co-located at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. So I would visit the machine room on occasion to go fix things with the SunOS 4 systems we had. For a while, I considered requesting that my assigned desk be moved into the machine room, because our servers occupied two ordinary tables in a far corner of the place that was about as far from humanity as anyone could go. It was, of course, noisy with white noise and chilly with air conditioning to keep the machines more comfortable than the staff. I never made my request and it never would've been granted. I imagine they couldn't even run a phone line into that place to get a hold of me.

ErroneousBosh 10mo ago

That sounds like a lot. I'd be surprised if it didn't just use three-phase. Given the power requirements, heat, and noise, you'd probably want to run it in the garage anyway.

PaulHoule 10mo ago
What's funny is that I never actually felt it was hot in a datacenter that hosted a mainframe, I think because they were water cooled and also not packed in that tight. Circa 2005 I would regularly go to the data center on the 7th floor of Rhodes hall [1] and it had a mainframe (cool, but it might have been CMOS instead of bipolar) and huge amounts of rack space devoted to RS-6000, SGI, SPARC and other legacy RISC servers and just a few racks of x86 servers which felt a lot hotter both from radiant heat in the front and hot air blowing out the back because they were packed in tight -- three racks of modern servers would outpower that old CMOS mainframe although of course they do a lot more. [1] I work on the 6th now but never go to the data center
- B1FIDO 10mo ago
  I once worked for an ISP where our routers and servers were co-located at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. So I would visit the machine room on occasion to go fix things with the SunOS 4 systems we had. For a while, I considered requesting that my assigned desk be moved into the machine room, because our servers occupied two ordinary tables in a far corner of the place that was about as far from humanity as anyone could go. It was, of course, noisy with white noise and chilly with air conditioning to keep the machines more comfortable than the staff. I never made my request and it never would've been granted. I imagine they couldn't even run a phone line into that place to get a hold of me.