Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ub.d.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!sctc.com!smith From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Top Ten Computer Architectures Message-ID: <1990Nov16.150558.29882@sctc.com> Date: 16 Nov 90 15:05:58 GMT References: <11613@alice.att.com> <4868@trantor.harris-atd.com> <4876@trantor.harris-atd.com> Organization: Secure Computing Technology Corporation Lines: 27 Everyone has their own lists, of course... Here are some of mine, fewer than ten, and in no particular order: The Manchester "baby," oft cited as the first one to run a stored program, and my nominee for the first RISC architecture :-) Everyone else was struggling to build multipliers while Williams and Kilburn put together something that could only subtract and zero the accumulator. The Whirlwind, whose design virtually set the standard for implementing IAS style machines (the IBM 701/4/9... series, everything from DEC, and almost every uniprocessor you see today). The Manchester Atlas, of course, the pioneer of multiprogramming and paging. The Burroughs B5000 and children, pioneering multiprocessing, and high level language support. Turing's Pilot ACE, for being so mind-bending. Seymour Cray's CDC 6600, for a similar reason. It was weird, but fast. The VAX, for burying so many misconceptions about the inherent differences between "little" (e.g. non-mainframe) and "big" computers. It was called a "supermini" computer when it was introduced. Remember? Rick. smith@sctc.com Arden Hills, Minnesota