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From: rchrd@well.UUCP (Richard Friedman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: CDC 8600
Keywords: CDC 8600
Message-ID: <11371@well.UUCP>
Date: 23 Apr 89 05:45:40 GMT
References: <13998@sequent.UUCP> <747@key.COM> <7948@super.ORG> <791@wucs1.wustl.edu>
Reply-To: rchrd@well.UUCP (Richard Friedman)
Organization: RCHRD 2855 Telegraph #415 Berkeley CA 94705
Lines: 30

In article <791@wucs1.wustl.edu> jps@wucs1.UUCP (James Sterbenz) writes:
>In article <7948@super.ORG> mjt@super.UUCP (Michael J. Tighe) writes:
>>Does anyone have any information on the CDC 8600? I saw a picture of
>>it recently. About all I know is it was built around 1973
>
>I thought that the 8600 was the name for Cray's 7600 successor machine,
>while he was still at CDC.  This was in compitition with the STAR-100,
>which Norris decided was the way CDC wanted to go.  Cray took the 8600
>(with CDC's blessing and support) to become the Cray-1.  This would
>be about the right time, but was there any working hardware before
>Cray broke off? 
>
>James Sterbenz  Computer and Communications Research Center
 
I actually saw a mock up of the 8600 in CDC's Chippewa Falls lab
in '72 (or was it '74?).  Then Cray was at CDC Chippewa lab and the 8600
was indeed to be the follow on of the 7600, with vector instructions
(somewhere in my archives is a pre-release of the 8600 instruction set)
The lab engineer who showed it to me said that CDC was going to have to
hire a lot of very short engineers with very long narrow arms to service
it.  It was about waist high and looked alot like a miniature Cray-1.
When I saw my first Cray-1 4 years later I was surprised that it was
just like the 8600, but it had grown up.     Those were heady days!
Gawd we're getting old.
(rip cdc/eta).

-- 
 ...Richard Friedman [rchrd]  Berkeley, CA.                         
    rchrd@well.uucp        -or-
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