| John W. Kennedy 2006-01-16, 9:55 pm |
| robin wrote:
[color=darkred]
> IBM set it.
So your argument is that the 704 hardware had to implement
double-precision floating-point in 1954 in order to support FORTRAN IV,
which didn't even come out until 1962 (two hardware generations later)?
>
> The term "mantissa" has been used since the early days of computers
> to describe part of floating-point number.
>
> Are you having a bad day?
Either you are attempting to argue that the size of the fraction and the
size of the exponent are each more important than one another, while
simultaneously maintaining that word size has nothing to do with the
issue either way, or else you are simply misusing words.
>
> When I last looked, 27 + 1 + 7 + 1 = 36.
Are you under the impression that the 704 series had a 35-bit word with
a parity bit?
[color=darkred]
> You're overlooking, PL/I, which for which z/OS has a recent compiler.
PL/I is not a major player in the raw-science market; if it were, IBM
would have implemented PL/I support for the (now dead, like every other
attempt to put the 360 family back into the high-performance-computing
market) 370 vector processor.
>
> Only the original, not the revised hardware, as I previously stated (below).
Indeed, even the TS instruction was not implemented.
>
> AFAIK, no-one else followed suite.
Because they couldn't afford to.
>
>
>
> It wasn't a problem for anyone in an extensive institution.
It demonstrably was a problem. IBM spent a fortune fixing what could be
fixed (note that it had to implement the change on at least seven
different machine types), the literature was full of problems introduced
by the S/360, and, in the end, the S/360 and follow-up lines were never
more than marginally successful in the supercomputing arena.
> I didn't buy anything. But I would point out that those
> "cheap" systems had superior real-time performance, with
> multiple resister sets and processor states for handling
> interrupts.
>
>
> No they didn't. I was referring to clones in which the guard digit
> on d.p. was NEVER provided. [see above]
>
>
>
> Still no instance?
Gee, somehow I can't find my old computer magazines from the mid-60's. I
guess my mother threw them out with my comic books.
>
> Still no answer?
I was in Junior High when these choices were being made. All I know is
that they were found inadequate in the field by many customers.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
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