Content deleted Content added
m →History |
m →History |
||
Line 11:
Over the next two years, the issue of 360 compatibility was argued back and forth. In January 1967, [[Ralph L. Palmer]] asked [[John Backus]], [[Robert Creasy]], and Harwood Kolsky to review the project. Kolsky concluded that this would be too difficult, and pointed out that the ASC was aimed at the [[CDC 6600]] market, not the 360's, so if the customer was interested in compatibility, 6600 would seem more useful. The next month, Amdahl once again argued for 360 compatibility for marketing reasons, and then in December he met personally with Kolsky to demonstrate how this might work. The previous month, in November 1967, Herb Schorr had presented a timeline for the first delivery in 1971 with a development budget for software on the order of $15 million. Amdahl argued that a fast 360 platform would offer much of the performance yet eliminate the need to develop a new [[operating system]] and all of the associated programming languages and support, and that that money would be better spent on improving OS/360 in general, which would improve the entire line.<ref name="smotherman"/>
As a result of this ongoing argument, Amdahl was ostracized within the team. As further punishment, they assigned John Earle to work for him. Earle was a brilliant circuit designer, but his interactions with other team members led to him being forced out as well. Earle and Amdahl then designed a new concept using the ASC's circuit design to produce a high-end 360. The two quickly proved that one could use the ASC circuit designs to build a 360 that was slightly
In December 1967, Amdahl began calling people within IBM to tell them about the new design, which eventually led to a management overview and "shoot out" between the two approaches. Lynn Conway would later conclude these numbers were unlikely to be anything close to correct, but management accepted them in any event.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Memoirs/ACS/Lynn_Conway_ACS_Reminiscences.pdf |title=IBM-ACS: Reminiscences and Lessons Learned From a 1960’s Supercomputer Project |first=Lynn |last=Conway |date=2011}}</ref> In May 1968, the decision was made to go with Amdahl's approach, and this resulted in the name change from ''ACS-1'' to ''ACS-360''. At its peak, the ACS-360 project involved over 200 engineers and staff.<ref name="smotherman"/>
| |||