On the top secret number cruching.... The Cray had an instruction called 'population count'
asked for by the NSA. The number of bits on in a word, not sure what this was used for. ________________________________ From: ben via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2022 10:52 AM To: cctalk@classiccmp.org <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Cc: ben <bfranc...@jetnet.ab.ca> Subject: [cctalk] Re: Minicomputer front panel. On 2022-09-23 11:35 a.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 9/23/22 09:53, Paul Koning wrote: > >> Those are good examples, but is it "many" or just those two and maybe one or >> two more? For example, Burroughs and IBM mainframes were both very much >> "lights and switches" control panel type machines. For that matter, so were >> the other CDC products; the 6000 series was a bit of an outlier I think. > > How many supercomputers were there in the 1960s? I suppose you could > count the 360/195 as a ridiculous example of the opposite approach, but > eventually, even IBM saw the light. > > --Chuck > > Just how do the supercomputer do i/o for all that floating numbers. Weather maps I can see for output, but what about all that Top Secret number crunching. Ben.
