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COMPUTER ARCUTECTURFL Gordon Bell Vice President, Engineering Digital Equipment Corporation & Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering Carnegie-Mellon University (on leave) Abstract Minimal cost computer designs ( i.e. minicomputers) are predicated on using technological cost-performance improvements which occur at an annual rate of 25-305. New applications are thereby feasible with the decreasing costs. A significant number of minicomputers are manufactured in which the cost is constant (or rising), thereby providing more performance (capabilities). The higher performance machines "taket1 their characteristics from the larger, general purpose camputers (e.g. floating point arith- metic, multiprocessors, cache memories and memory management) . The origin and evolution of the minicomputer will be discussed with regard to technology and applications. 7 17178 THR PDP-I? FAMILY AND VAX-Ill780 FOR A LARGE VIRTUAL ADDRESS Gordon Bell Vice President, Engineering Digital Equipment Corporation & Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering Carnegie-Mellon University (on leave) Abstract In the eight years the PDP-11 has been on the market, more than 50,000 units in ten different models have been sold. Although one of the system design goals was a broad range of models, the actual range of 500 to 1 (in price and memory size) has exceeded the design goal. The PDP-11 was designed and first implemented to be a mall minicomputer. Its first extension was to a bigger physical address, memory segmentation for multiprogramming and for higher performance. This part of the talk will briefly reflect the experience in the design process, comment on its success from the point of view of the goals, and its use of technology. The main presentation will be on the VAX-11 architectural exten- sions, including: goals and implementation. 7/7/78 ID80 176 INTEROFFICE MEMO SUBJ: THE JAPANESE MARKET AND COMPONENTS--AN OPPORTUNITY Date: 7/26/78 Wed From: Gordon Bell / TO: Marketing Committee Dept: Office of Development Don Frost, Carl Jansen MS: ML12/A51 Ext: 2236 Ron Smart Follow up 8/9/78 Although we may do all right in this market alone, it's hard to believe we'll do very well without a Japanese partner (or front---super OEM). The market feels bigger than Europe because it has: a more technical user base, a weak IBM, a homogeneous population, competitors working mainly on large machines, and needs for relatively undiscovered small machines which may better match the organizations problems (i.e. minis). On the other hand, I believe the society (business) is relatively closed to U.S. companies operating as we have been. Certainly we'll not get in the door of most large corporations. I had lunch with Mr. Iwama, the President of Sony, and he mentioned discussing a joint venture with Ted several years ago. Also they have a venture with Tektronix--which we might check out. Since I don't see Sony as an ultimate competitor, it would certainly be worth exploring such a scheme provided we want to bother with this market. Sony is a potential supplier. Given their very strong technology in semiconductors, magnetics and TV (e.g. color), we could build some truly unique (great) products based on parts I saw--they pride themselves on their research (which I found very impressive). We need them as a supplier--given our dedication to now move to end user products. (Also, I would believe European Engineering must be Tokyo.) I would hope that we would explore something like this. What you think? GB/m jf Subject: Our Commitment to MEC; Future Dealings with them as an OEN To: Don Frost, Yu Hata, Date: July 28, 1978 Carl Jansen, Ted Johnson, From: Gordon Bell Julius Marcus Dept: OOD Loc.: ML12-1 Ext.: 2236 CC: Ron Smart We had cordial meetings with NEC regarding our supply of 11/70*s for what seems like a joint venture into minis into the NTAA (IRS). As an Operations Committee member I voted to support this. Now, I hear us weaseling out of this and it seems like we can jeopardize the success of the system because they can easily misapply IAS, DBF4S and DECnet. We have to keep close enough to know when this is happening and we must inform their management too I I invited Dr. Ishii, the head of this group, to visit Carl and Julius and Ken in Maynard to confirm the support and reaffirm/clarify the . commitment we have. We also have to discuss any concerns vis a vis their plan to take our technology (DECnet, IAS, the 11/70). I suspect their only interest is in DECnet...and that should be copyable from the published documents. I also suggested they simply buy 11's (for their mini) and backward integrate using the 11 by making memory, attaching their peripherals, etc. This gets them a full mini line quickly without the expense of manufacture. Currently they build Level 6, and this seems like a waste of resources when they could buy cpu's from us. It's possible this could be another Plessey, but I doubt it. Instead, we get a supplier of 11s in end use. As an aside, I suggested we tell MITI to adopt the 11 as a standard, just as they have with the 320 for minis. This is clearly intriguing. GB:ljp Subject: Low Power Bipolar Gate Array To: Bob Armstrong, Jim Cudmore, Date: July 28, 1978 Bill Demmer, Bill Green, From: Gordon Bell George Hoff, Alan Kotok Dept: OOD Loc.: ML12-1 Ext.: 2236 follow up 8/11/78 . The Japanese did what seems like an incredibly clever thing in developing a low power gate array. They simply use only a fraction of their regular large gate array that has a heat sink. This means only one part, one design system etc. Can we learn from them? (Let's not develop the smaller bipolar gate array -- have everyone use the current one.) Can the ECL array be used in a similar way? Fujitsu has bipolar arrays. Can we use them? They also have 8ns RAMS. GB:ljp . +--------------- + ID#1079 ldigitall interoffice memorandum +--------------- + Subject: Fujitsu's 14-200. (Compatible uith 370) To: OOD, Sam Fuller, Date: July 28, 1978 Alan Kotok, Dave Rodgers, From: Gordon Bell Dill Strecker, Pete vanRoekens Dept: OOD Loc.: ML12-1 EXt.: 2236 . I've just seen what I think is a decent 370. It's supposed to be the highest performance one (1.3-1.5) x 3033 as a single processor. The beautiful part is how they do 2-4 processors. Two memory controllers arbitrate requests on two separate buses for the 16 Mbytes in the memory modules. The memory controllers multiplex requests from 4 processors and 4 multiplexors from the I/O channel groups as follows: I1 1 1 I 1 T .-K( system)-K (Mp) R( Mp) -K( system)-T .console I Pio.. Pio.. I I A failure anywhere can be tolerated. The K(Mp)'s have separate power. T.console communicates to all modules, Pc has a cache (write through) and each K(Mp) broadcasts writes to all Pc's on a physical memory basis. They're after reliability and incrernented upgrade (since their customers buy and want more capability). They're also going after the performance title! The O/S modification was very hard, due to the structure of IBM's system. GB:ljp L COULD YOU PlS GIVE GORDON BILL THESE TELEXES HE Will BE C/- f 88 DAVE BALLAHTIHE THESE ARE HIS COPIES TKS zczc MP30 BDBB 3 AUG 78 MSG MU 927 TU: JIM BELL / ML3-2/€41/MAYHARO FR: GORDON BELL / CANBERRA AUSTRALIA PLEASE LOOK AT CDC PROGRAM UPDATE. MEET OR. PALAHDRl Af CSlRO DECUS, SEE PROGRAM/PROJECT MAldAGEMEHT SYSTEM OPERATE. CDC HAS BETTER INTERNAL ONE. JOHN JONES WILL SEND MANUAL. SHOULD EARL AND KEATIHG DO THIS? REGARDS ""H L A E- MSG NO 926 Tor LARRY PORTNER / ML 12-3 /A 62 MA YNA R D FR1 GORDOrQ BELC./ CA IIIBERRA' AUSTRAL IA a . .. ' 4 PLEAsE R ELEAs !-MU CH FIELD '&S MAHPWEf?-* 00 fH% &OW ING IMCSED IAfElYs . I - .L 1 + , . I. 1. UNLESS THERE IS A N AUTUMAT'tC PATCH tlYG FhCIL ITV IN 'A SYSTEM, 0 ISTR IBUTE SOFTMARE WITH ZERO (0)PATCHES ON THE- SAME TAPE, .p' . 1 . t, 2, VERIFY :(Q/h,J PC'CHES'BEFbaE DI'STRIBUTION. A - h -, 3. LETS GET KdQWN 'IHTERHBL FAC IL IT IES THiT RUN THE ,CURRENT VERSION AND THEIR PATCHES' FOR ALL SYSTEMS ,L- I .# .- i * .I A . 1 FOR LARRY PORTNER/JIM BELL 1, AM REALLY IMPRESSED BY MIS COMPANY MPG BUSINESS PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE THAT COMPILES INTO BASIC t WITH s:i COMPRESSION AND OFFERS VERY HIGH F'F:OGRAMMEF: PRODUCTIVITY t THEY SEEM TO HAVE ELIMINATED PROGRAMMING IN TI-IETR AF'PLICATIONSI GIVES 2OO.t SOURCE X 5 BASIC LINES/DAYt GO THROUGH OUR MELBOURNE OFFICE TO SEE IT WHILE AT IECUSi LET'S BUY IT AND RESELL IT AND USE IT FOR INTERATIVE COMMERCIAL. APPLICATIONS* 2, HERR BAD QC ON RT EXTENJIED MEMORY, ALL FORTRAN IU mrt MULTIUSER BASIC RTVE 3* WHAT RIGHT STORY ON DBMS-11 QUERY UTILITY SFD OR MKT GUIBE? 4* LARRY/JIM PLEASE ORGANIZE A SEPT OR OCT SEMINAR I CAN ATTEND ON THE PIETHODS FOR BUSINESS APPLICATION SW + HAVE GREAT PRESENTATIONS ON APPROACHES t (BIG TURNKEY PACKAGES, LITTLE COMPONENTSI STD LANGUAGE 9 POL I PROG GENt IIBMS WITH UTILITIESY TRAX ETC*)+ GET STD BENCHMARK TO TRY ON ALL, LET'S GET AN UNDERSTANDING+ 0002 0851 04-AUG 00210 Oi04 04-AUG M962 MF'30 AUG-78 ' UIC 9675 1125 f&GORDON HELL MLi2-1 r I IWft SEAFORTH LYL.E/JOHN LENG '0 ' GOT BASICALLY UNCI-IANGEU BROCHURE AND MESSAGES FROM COHEN ANri LAMB, 1, THERE ARE ONLY 2500 IN ENGINEERING? NOT 2500 ENGINEERS+ 3, ONE SENTENCE HAS 2 STRONGLYS+ *3* LAST SENTENCE uNrm LIST PROCESSING IS WRONG? I DON'T USE THIS MARY JANE DOES+ 4+ NEEDS WHAT THE OPTIONS ARE: BASICF FORTRAN? DIPOLt DXF ETC, SHOULD DESCRIBE PRODUCT HARIIER+ c cl+ WHY CLUTTERED RANDOM CRAP ON LAST FAGE? HAVE HEIDI BALDUS AND MARY JANE FORBES EDIT ANI1 CHECK THIS IF IT IS TO STAY IN FIRST PERSON, INTRO Oti AS FIRST PERSON, STILL CANT ORDER FROM THIS+ FIN11 IT UNURGANIZEDF LACKING PUNCH* WILL REGIVE ANOTHER BOCUMENT TO INFORM AND SELL, THE ANTITHESIS OF THE BROCHURES I (AN ENGINEER?) WANT TO SEE, STILL PLAN TO HELP YOU ENTER (DOMINATE) ENGINEERING MARKET, CAN YOU HELF ME? f0‘I DEMMERr LACROLlTEr WITMOREr LONG WE’RE SELLING VAX’S IN AUSTRALIA AT THE UNIVERSITIESt THEY APIDRECIATE IT.