Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!kolding
From: kolding@cs.washington.edu (Eric Koldinger)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IBM RISC
Keywords: what integer parallelism?
Message-ID: <10945@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 90 11:51:01 GMT
References: <8064@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <7454@pdn.paradyne.com> <1653@awdprime.UUCP> <32344@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <438@peyote.cactus.org> <5004@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: kolding@june.cs.washington.edu (Eric Koldinger)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 30

In article <5004@helios.ee.lbl.gov> antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney) writes:
>Question: 
>
>	Why doesn't IBM just make all the information about the machine's
>architecture available to the world, so that engineers and scientists can
>make their own decisions about how good it is or isn't and this group can
>have a decent discussion based on published fact and not based on rumor?
>It might certainly help get rid of all the postings which seem to have no
>foundation whatsoever (such as this one)...
>

The information is somewhat available.  There are two papers in ICCD '89 about
the procesors architecture.  I haven't read either one of them yet, but I plan
to later this week.  They look like they might contain more information than
most IBM papers do (most papers from IBeam are rather pruned by the lawyers
before they get out.  As a result, they end up being rather light on the
content side).

You really can't blame IBM for not giving out all the information on their
latest whiz-bang machines.  They're in the business of making money, not
providing their competition with potentially damaging information.  I just wish
that they'd release more in depth information on research/non-product stuff
(the papers I've seen on the PL.8 compiler, a research compiler as far as I
know, are all rather skimpy).

-- 
        _   /|                          Eric Koldinger
        \`o_O'                          University of Washington
          ( )     "Gag Ack Barf"        Department of Computer Science
           U                            kolding@cs.washington.edu