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From: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Can old architectures run fast?
Message-ID: <8346@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 6 May 91 22:04:29 GMT
References: <8283@uceng.UC.EDU> <7628@auspex.auspex.com> <8324@uceng.UC.EDU> <1991May05.174756.9026@iecc.cambridge.ma.us>
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In article <1991May05.174756.9026@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
>In article <8324@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes:
>>Are we likely to see the fastest CPU in year X being able to run,
>>without change, a binary program more than 5 years old? ...
>Well, there's always the IBM 360.  You can still run 1965 vintage 360
>binaries on IBM's latest 3090 mainframe.

That is truly impressive, in fact, it's rather astounding. But I see 
I left cost out of my question. So let me try another wrinkle:

How does a 3090 stack up against modern workstations on the usual
measures of performance/price, such as SPECmarks/$? My guess would
be that the large backwards compatibility comes at a price.

Also, how much slower and/or more expensive is the 3090 as a result
of maintaining such backwards compatibility? (I realize that might be
hard to get a handle on.)



--
Dan Mocsny				
Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu