Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!abvax!iccgcc!herrickd From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (daniel lance herrick) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Computers for users not programmers Message-ID: <3309.27c02d4c@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> Date: 19 Feb 91 00:38:52 GMT References: <4772@mindlink.UUCP> <1991Feb13.180108.13480@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> <2933@charon.cwi.nl> <1991Feb14.153747.26911@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> Lines: 39 In article , mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu (John D. McCalpin) writes: [Discussion of whether supercomputer should do mundane things like] [compile and edit truncated ] > (3) At least on the Cyber 205, I was told (by Neil Lincoln) that the > compiler actually made very heavy use of the vector unit. I think I > remember Neil telling me that he wrote a paper on the topic of vectorized > code optimization in the late 70's or early 80's.... > Back around 1975 I drove down from Owosso the Michigan State to hear a lecture by Neil Lincoln at an ACM student chapter meeting. He was then working on the CDC Star, serial number one or two was on the other side of his lab wall. He had a native Fortran compiler that he said compiled at [several million lines of source per second - I don't remember the number]. That speed number impressed me. It also impressed the rest of the audience. The Star was a 256 bit word machine with an ALU at every word. After a suitable pause for his speed number to sink in, he said, "What if you could tell your computer to find every plus sign in memory and replace it with something, and then, in the next machine cycle...." Several years later, I was working at MDSI and met Neal Faiman who had been at that same lecture as a student. He told me that some people at State had got a copy of Lincoln's compiler and ran it on a Star simulator that ran on the CDC [3600 maybe] at the school. The real punch line of this story came when Neal said that Lincoln's compiler, running on the simulated Star, ran faster than the native compiler shipped with the 3600. [Don't bury me under questions, this story comes out of casual conversation and I don't know things like comparative benchmarks of the generated code. Lincoln's compiler did generate code for the 3600 so the thing could have been put to use.] dan herrick herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com