On Mon, 2025-02-17 at 03:39 +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > CDC 6000-series turned in better performance benchmarks on COBOL tha > did the high-end IBM S/370 iron
In the mid 1970s at JPL, we were using Uniac 1108 for scientific computing and IBM 370 for administrative computing. My group go a task to develop some benchmarks to choose the next big computers. We wrote COBOL and FORTRAN benchmarks. Univac was faster on the COBOL benchmarks, and IBM was faster on the FORTRAN benchmarks. But we stuck with Univac for scientific computing and IBM for administrative computing. What ultimately carried the day was software compatibility. The administrative COBOL software used proprietary IBM extensions. Univac double precision is 18 digits, while 370 double precision is 14 digits.
