🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:

> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup) there
> was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle  The
> article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the exact
> puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE contained
> this article???
> 
> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
> fixed pentominoes.
> 
> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone here
> recalls this magazine article!

I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup) there
>> was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle  The
>> article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the exact
>> puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE contained
>> this article???
>>
>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
>> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
>> fixed pentominoes.
>>
>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone here
>> recalls this magazine article!
> 
> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
> 

Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:12:32 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:

> On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup)
>>> there was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle 
>>> The article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the
>>> exact puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE
>>> contained this article???
>>>
>>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
>>> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
>>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
>>> fixed pentominoes.
>>>
>>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone
>>> here recalls this magazine article!
>> 
>> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
>> 
>> 
> Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???

Yes.

  https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-11?q=pentominoes



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:12:32 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
>> On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup)
>>>> there was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle 
>>>> The article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the
>>>> exact puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE
>>>> contained this article???
>>>> 
>>>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
>>>> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
>>>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>>>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
>>>> fixed pentominoes.
>>>> 
>>>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone
>>>> here recalls this magazine article!
>>> 
>>> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
>>> 
>>> 
>> Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???
> 
> Yes.
> 
>   https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-11?q=pentominoes
> 

Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
days, before they went over to the dark side.

-- 
Pete

On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:12:32 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup)
>>>>> there was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle
>>>>> The article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the
>>>>> exact puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE
>>>>> contained this article???
>>>>>
>>>>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
>>>>> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
>>>>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>>>>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
>>>>> fixed pentominoes.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone
>>>>> here recalls this magazine article!
>>>>
>>>> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>    https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-11?q=pentominoes
>>
> 
> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
> days, before they went over to the dark side.
> 

Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content 
instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to 
download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the 
articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Thu, 1 Mar 2018 01:17:16 -0600, Charles Richmond
<nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

>On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:12:32 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup)
>>>>>> there was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino puzzle
>>>>>> The article contained a 6502 assembly language program for solving the
>>>>>> exact puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which issue of BYTE
>>>>>> contained this article???
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon
>>>>>> in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. ...
>>>>>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>>>>>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63
>>>>>> fixed pentominoes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that someone
>>>>>> here recalls this magazine article!
>>>>>
>>>>> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>>
>>>    https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-11?q=pentominoes
>>>
>> 
>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>> 
>
>Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content 
>instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to 
>download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the 
>articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.

I've always found that keying the code does something that downloading
and studying it doesn't.  Don't know if it's the process of running
every character of it through one's nervous system in the typing
process or whether it's fixing the inevitable bugs that are introduced
by that process, but it does something.

On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 07:23:39 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Mar 2018 01:17:16 -0600, Charles Richmond
> <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> 
>>On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>>> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:12:32 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2/27/2018 7:00 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:58:48 -0600, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Back in the 1980's (and well within the purview of this newsgroup)
>>>>>>> there was an article in BYTE magazine on solving a pentomino
>>>>>>> puzzle The article contained a 6502 assembly language program for
>>>>>>> solving the exact puzzle mentioned.  Can anyone point me to which
>>>>>>> issue of BYTE contained this article???
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A pentomino (or 5-omino) is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a
>>>>>>> polygon in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected
>>>>>>> edge-to-edge. ...
>>>>>>> When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided
>>>>>>> pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there
>>>>>>> are 63 fixed pentominoes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've done a lot of Googling to no avail...  I'm hoping that
>>>>>>> someone here recalls this magazine article!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I found an article on polyominoes, but only up to order 4.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Where did you find the article???  Was it in BYTE magazine???
>>>>
>>>> Yes.
>>>>
>>>>    https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-11?q=pentominoes
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>>> 
>>> 
>>Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content
>>instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to
>>download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the
>>articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.
> 
> I've always found that keying the code does something that downloading
> and studying it doesn't.  Don't know if it's the process of running
> every character of it through one's nervous system in the typing process
> or whether it's fixing the inevitable bugs that are introduced by that
> process, but it does something.

I set a load of lab classes last semester, with programs for students to 
type in and try out. 

I made all the listings into .jpg files...



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 12:53:09 +0000, Huge wrote:

> On 2018-03-01, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
> 
> [51 lines snipped]
> 
>> I set a load of lab classes last semester, with programs for students
>> to type in and try out.
>>
>> I made all the listings into .jpg files...
> 
> You're a very naughty man.
> 
> But Tesseract is very good.

They (a) don't think of that (b) it isn't installed (c) it's quicker to 
type it in!



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 14:11:33 +0000, Huge wrote:

> On 2018-03-01, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 12:53:09 +0000, Huge wrote:
>>
>>> On 2018-03-01, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>> 
>>> [51 lines snipped]
>>> 
>>>> I set a load of lab classes last semester, with programs for students
>>>> to type in and try out.
>>>>
>>>> I made all the listings into .jpg files...
>>> 
>>> You're a very naughty man.
>>> 
>>> But Tesseract is very good.
>>
>> They (a) don't think of that
> 
> That's because I'm old, devious and lazy.
> 
>> (b) it isn't installed
> 
> So install it!

Not my problem. Standard university PC image.

-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass
<peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[snip]

>Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>days, before they went over to the dark side.

     But they did not go to the dark side!  They went to the bright,
shiny side.

     Yes, I liked the old Byte, too.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 2018-03-01, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

> On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>
> Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content 
> instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to 
> download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the 
> articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.

I used to read it religiously every month.  Then one day I woke up
and realized it had turned into Yet Another Wintel Rag, and gave
it up.  Before long, enough others relized this that it folded.
It was a sad end for what was once such an enjoyable magazine.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass
> <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
> 
>      But they did not go to the dark side!  They went to the bright,
> shiny side.

But they turned toward slavish worship of Micro$oft.

> 
>      Yes, I liked the old Byte, too.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Gene Wirchenko
> 



-- 
Pete

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2018-03-01, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>> 
>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>> 
>> Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content 
>> instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to 
>> download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the 
>> articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.
> 
> I used to read it religiously every month.  Then one day I woke up
> and realized it had turned into Yet Another Wintel Rag, and gave
> it up.  Before long, enough others relized this that it folded.
> It was a sad end for what was once such an enjoyable magazine.
> 

It's sad. They went from a magazine with a small but well-established niche
with devoted readers to an attempt to appeal to a larger readership who
really didn't care. This is the story of a lot of small companies, not just
magazines.

-- 
Pete

On 3/1/2018 1:22 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2018-03-01, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>
>>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>>>
>>> Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content
>>> instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to
>>> download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the
>>> articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.
>>
>> I used to read it religiously every month.  Then one day I woke up
>> and realized it had turned into Yet Another Wintel Rag, and gave
>> it up.  Before long, enough others relized this that it folded.
>> It was a sad end for what was once such an enjoyable magazine.
>>
> 
> It's sad. They went from a magazine with a small but well-established niche
> with devoted readers to an attempt to appeal to a larger readership who
> really didn't care. This is the story of a lot of small companies, not just
> magazines.
> 

Probably the old hobby advertisers went under and BYTE had to become a 
reviewing and advertising rag to attract the new class of computer 
product sales ads.  This really means that hobbyist-style printed 
computer magazines are no longer viable!  :-(

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 10:07:22 -0800
Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

>      But they did not go to the dark side!  They went to the bright,
> shiny side.

	More like shite and briney.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

On 2018-03-01, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass
>> <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> [snip]
>> 
>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>> 
>>      But they did not go to the dark side!  They went to the bright,
>> shiny side.
>
> But they turned toward slavish worship of Micro$oft.

Like he said: Ooooh, shiny.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>
> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
> days, before they went over to the dark side.

When was this?

I ever so often download an issue from archive.org when it's between 1977
and 1987. I guess I am not much interested what happened in the computer
world after that. There was only the PC, the PC and perhaps the PC. Okay,
Macs may be, and the Amiga was still strong until the mid 90s. So boring
otherwise after 1987.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

You've got it.

Basically, claiming that BYTE went to "the dark side" implies that they 
abandoned one group of readers to chase after a new group of readers.

But this misses the reality.

BYTE started out as a "hobbyist" magazine because when it started, 
that was the only way an ordinary person could have a computer.

Things changed. The technology advanced. The IBM PC and its clones 
offered 80 columns, lower-case, a standard floppy-disk format, and up 
to 640K of RAM in a nice neat package.

And the people who just wanted a computer to make use of outnumbered 
those who were hobbyists for the sake of tinkering.

On Thu, 1 Mar 2018 12:22:36 -0700, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2018-03-01, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2/28/2018 5:51 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>>> 
>>> Yes!  BYTE was wonderful and stimulating when it had substantive content 
>>> instead of just advertising pieces.  Although it was kind of good to 
>>> download source code, the cessation of printing source code with the 
>>> articles was a step away from substantive programming articles.
>> 
>> I used to read it religiously every month.  Then one day I woke up
>> and realized it had turned into Yet Another Wintel Rag, and gave
>> it up.  Before long, enough others relized this that it folded.
>> It was a sad end for what was once such an enjoyable magazine.
>> 
>
>It's sad. They went from a magazine with a small but well-established niche
>with devoted readers to an attempt to appeal to a larger readership who
>really didn't care. This is the story of a lot of small companies, not just
>magazines.

Yeah, when the Circuit Cellar went away, even though I would likely
never make anything in those articles, I realized something was wrong.
I didn't subscribe, so I had to drive to another town to get a copy.
When I saw loads of Windows adverts and articles... I hoped it was
merely a review issue... I read the articles and knew I would never
buy another copy as they told too glowing of claims about Windows I
knew was flat out nonsense.

In other words, BYTE didn't abandon its readers: it _followed_ them, as 
they moved on because the world had changed.

If it hadn't, it would have died even sooner: much too soon to be around for the Raspberry Pi.

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> In other words, BYTE didn't abandon its readers: it _followed_ them, as 
> they moved on because the world had changed.
> 
> If it hadn't, it would have died even sooner: much too soon to be around
> for the Raspberry Pi.
> 

Well, it abandoned _us_, or at least several of us here, apparently.  When
my subscription lapsed they called to try to get me to resubscribe and I
told them something like "the magazine has gone off in a direction I'm not
interested in." What I enjoyed (as well as Circuit Cellar, of course) were
the programming articles. I could often pick up a technique I wasn't
familiar with, or a novel concept.

I can't believe many of the original subscribers were interested in an yet
another article comparing office suites, or touting some new feature of
windows. Certainly there were lots of people who were interested, and many
of us were now using PCs and windoze, at least at work, but that kind of
stuff just wasn't what we read Byte for.

-- 
Pete

On Thu, 1 Mar 2018 13:47:22 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:
>
> In other words, BYTE didn't abandon its readers: it _followed_ them, as 
> they moved on because the world had changed.
>
> If it hadn't, it would have died even sooner: much too soon to be around for the Raspberry Pi.

While BYTE isn't the only magazine. Most (all?) went Wintendo in the
90s. Amateurs were the minority by them. I don't like that this happened,
but otherwise the magazines would go bust not to satisfy the majority of
computer users, which happened to be users of the IBM compatible computers.

Won't blame them, but it's sad. At least I stopped buying computer mags
in the early/mid 90s because it became so boring.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 4:47:24 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> In other words, BYTE didn't abandon its readers: it _followed_ them, as 
> they moved on because the world had changed.
> 
> If it hadn't, it would have died even sooner: much too soon to be around for the Raspberry Pi.

Dr. Dobbs, which didn't go all WinTel, survived much longer than Byte.
Probably because they never forgot their roots.

And, yes, Dr. Dobbs & Circuit Cellar would be right in the thick of 
the current IoT/SBC craze.

          - Tim

On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 16:24:16 -0800, timcaffrey420 wrote:

> On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 4:47:24 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> In other words, BYTE didn't abandon its readers: it _followed_ them, as
>> they moved on because the world had changed.
>> 
>> If it hadn't, it would have died even sooner: much too soon to be
>> around for the Raspberry Pi.
> 
> Dr. Dobbs, which didn't go all WinTel, survived much longer than Byte.
> Probably because they never forgot their roots.
> 
> And, yes, Dr. Dobbs & Circuit Cellar would be right in the thick of the
> current IoT/SBC craze.

I take it that people know about this:

  http://circuitcellar.com/

-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Thu, 2018-03-01, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>
> When was this?
>
> I ever so often download an issue from archive.org when it's between 1977
> and 1987. I guess I am not much interested what happened in the computer
> world after that. There was only the PC, the PC and perhaps the PC. Okay,
> Macs may be, and the Amiga was still strong until the mid 90s.

Or until 1992 or so at least.  At that point, the Amiga-oriented
periodical in Sweden started to bring in Windows material. Then
Commodore folded in 1994, I think it was.

> So boring otherwise after 1987.

Linux came to the rescue, for me: the ability to have a proper Unix
workstation at home.  But I never was very interested in hardware to
begin with ...

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@  Oo  o.   .     .
\X/     snipabacken.se>   O  o   .

On 2 Mar 2018 09:45:23 GMT, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2018-03-01, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>
>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>>
>> When was this?
>>
>> I ever so often download an issue from archive.org when it's between 1977
>> and 1987. I guess I am not much interested what happened in the computer
>> world after that. There was only the PC, the PC and perhaps the PC. Okay,
>> Macs may be, and the Amiga was still strong until the mid 90s.
>
> Or until 1992 or so at least.  At that point, the Amiga-oriented
> periodical in Sweden started to bring in Windows material. Then
> Commodore folded in 1994, I think it was.

That of course is personal preference and age. Suppose I might be a few
years older than you.

>> So boring otherwise after 1987.
>
> Linux came to the rescue, for me: the ability to have a proper Unix
> workstation at home.  But I never was very interested in hardware to
> begin with ...

I also use Linux (Gnus Emacs here, LISP! :-) but not have fond memories
of the time I used it for the first time (1997). I love memories of
computers I used in the early 1980s, like the Commodore 64 and later the
Amiga 500 around 1987. But after that, as I said, for me all becomes dull
and boring when it comes to computers.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On 2018-03-03, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On 2 Mar 2018 09:45:23 GMT, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>>
>> Linux came to the rescue, for me: the ability to have a proper Unix
>> workstation at home.  But I never was very interested in hardware to
>> begin with ...
>
> I also use Linux (Gnus Emacs here, LISP! :-) but not have fond memories
> of the time I used it for the first time (1997). I love memories of
> computers I used in the early 1980s, like the Commodore 64 and later the
> Amiga 500 around 1987. But after that, as I said, for me all becomes dull
> and boring when it comes to computers.

I use slrn/vim ;)
zx spectrum 48k, later Amstrad CPC 6128 with green monitor.
Wanted Amiga badly but here in Yugoslavia they were not available and
cost of importing them (if you are lucky) was prohibitive....
So when I started to work at 1992 I could afford my first PC.
Hardware, I like, yeah, but since now computers are powerfull there is
no much nostalgia, or except that I am still freak when comming to new
CPU's and bigger RAM ;)
Oh when I remember days with casette tape, like 5 mins to load 40kb and
then read error, so tweak casette player head and try again ;p

-- 
press any key to continue or any other to quit...

On Sat, 03 Mar 2018 15:55:57 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
<a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

>On 2 Mar 2018 09:45:23 GMT, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 2018-03-01, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:51:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Looking at the TOC reminded me how much I used to like Byte in the old
>>>> days, before they went over to the dark side.
>>>
>>> When was this?
>>>
>>> I ever so often download an issue from archive.org when it's between 1977
>>> and 1987. I guess I am not much interested what happened in the computer
>>> world after that. There was only the PC, the PC and perhaps the PC. Okay,
>>> Macs may be, and the Amiga was still strong until the mid 90s.
>>
>> Or until 1992 or so at least.  At that point, the Amiga-oriented
>> periodical in Sweden started to bring in Windows material. Then
>> Commodore folded in 1994, I think it was.
>
>That of course is personal preference and age. Suppose I might be a few
>years older than you.
>
>>> So boring otherwise after 1987.
>>
>> Linux came to the rescue, for me: the ability to have a proper Unix
>> workstation at home.  But I never was very interested in hardware to
>> begin with ...
>
>I also use Linux (Gnus Emacs here, LISP! :-) but not have fond memories
>of the time I used it for the first time (1997). I love memories of
>computers I used in the early 1980s, like the Commodore 64 and later the
>Amiga 500 around 1987. But after that, as I said, for me all becomes dull
>and boring when it comes to computers.

My "fond memories" have a gap in the '80s.  In the '70s I was in
college and got to play with mainframes and supercomputers.  Then in
the '80s I was in small business where a 386 machine was a huge deal
and I found the whole scene rather limiting.  Then the '90s came along
and what had been workstation-level capabilities came down to the
masses and things started to pick up.  And now in the 21st it's back
to the supercomputer only it's in a laptop platform and the excitement
is back.

On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 2:29:57 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
> And now in the 21st it's back
> to the supercomputer only it's in a laptop platform and the excitement
> is back.

A Pentium II is, in its architectural features:

- High-speed multiplication and division algorithms;
- Level 1 cache;
- Out-of-order execution, including register rename, in the floating-point unit

roughly comparable to a System/360 Model 195.

However, if you want a *real* supercomputer on your desktop, which is making me 
feel rather excited...

http://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/hpc/sx/vector_engine.html

I'll settle for an A100-1 with a Type 10C processor in it.

John Savard

On Sat, 3 Mar 2018 14:18:56 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:

>On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 2:29:57 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
>> And now in the 21st it's back
>> to the supercomputer only it's in a laptop platform and the excitement
>> is back.
>
>A Pentium II is

20 years obsolete.  Why do you believe it's relevant?

>, in its architectural features:
>
>- High-speed multiplication and division algorithms;
>- Level 1 cache;
>- Out-of-order execution, including register rename, in the floating-point unit
>
>roughly comparable to a System/360 Model 195.

So?  You're comparing one antique to another antique.

>However, if you want a *real* supercomputer on your desktop, which is making me 
>feel rather excited...
>
>http://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/hpc/sx/vector_engine.html
>
>I'll settle for an A100-1 with a Type 10C processor in it.

What decade of supercomputer are you trying to match?

On Sun, 04 Mar 2018 09:52:08 +0000, Huge wrote:

> On 2018-03-03, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> 
>> I love memories of computers I used in the early 1980s, like the
>> Commodore 64 and later the Amiga 500 around 1987.
> 
> I suspect if you had to use them now, your experiences would be very
> much at odds with those memories.

Must dig out the ZX81 ...




-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 3:52:07 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2018 14:18:56 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:

> >A Pentium II is

> 20 years obsolete.  Why do you believe it's relevant?

While Intel has certainly made lots of architectural improvements to its 
processors, after the detour of the Pentium 4, they did return to a line of 
development that goes back to the Pentium II and Pentium Pro. So the processor 
in your laptop today is closely related to it.

And the 360/195 was referred to as a "supercomputer" in its day.

But the NEC SX-Aurora Tsubasa is a *vector* processor, analogous to (but more 
powerful than) the Cray I. Yes, it does maybe *half* the flops of a good video 
card, but the programming flexibility is much greater, making that power much 
more usable.

John Savard

On 2018-03-04, Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
> On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 3:52:07 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
>> On Sat, 3 Mar 2018 14:18:56 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
>> wrote:
>> >A Pentium II is
>> 20 years obsolete.
>
> Hey, knobhead! Yes, you. Get your carer to read you the name of this
> newsgroup.
>

Agreed!+++


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 4 Mar 2018 10:46:20 GMT, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:

>On Sun, 04 Mar 2018 09:52:08 +0000, Huge wrote:
>
>> On 2018-03-03, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> I love memories of computers I used in the early 1980s, like the
>>> Commodore 64 and later the Amiga 500 around 1987.
>> 
>> I suspect if you had to use them now, your experiences would be very
>> much at odds with those memories.
>
>Must dig out the ZX81 ...

I have one of those as well. Got it from a ham radio friend who gave
it away, 2 games, and 5 books. I had to buy a cassette recorder/player
and 2 tapes. Doesn't like my LCD tv screen. Looks like I need an
adapter for the connection. RG-6 on the tv, phono plug on the ZX-81
end.

On Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:52:05 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
>
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2018 14:18:56 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
>
>>On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 2:29:57 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> And now in the 21st it's back
>>> to the supercomputer only it's in a laptop platform and the excitement
>>> is back.
>>
>>A Pentium II is
>
> 20 years obsolete.  Why do you believe it's relevant?

AFAIK it added quite some important features, like branch prediction. And
more recently helped coining the terms "Meltdown" and "Spectre". ;-)
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On 4 Mar 2018 13:39:26 GMT, ma...@mail.com wrote:
>
> On 2018-03-04, Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 3:52:07 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> On Sat, 3 Mar 2018 14:18:56 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>> >A Pentium II is
>>> 20 years obsolete.
>>
>> Hey, knobhead! Yes, you. Get your carer to read you the name of this
>> newsgroup.
>>
>
> Agreed!+++

But I think it's "Nobhead"
<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nob-head>. ;-)
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On 4 Mar 2018 11:01:36 GMT, Huge wrote:
>
> I spent a couple of years, several decades ago, programming MUMPS (on
> a PDP11/40 IIRC). I loved it. At the time, my favourite programming
> language (not that I knew many) and the first high level language (well,
> kinda) that I'd ever come across that had facilities built-in to write
> self modifying code.

That was because it lacked a stack?

I just learned about using self modifying codes to do jumps to
subroutines on languages (or CPUs) not supporting stacks
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR8V0lq029c>.

It is called Wheeler Jump there.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On Sun, 04 Mar 2018 11:56:03 -0600, JimP wrote:
>
> On 4 Mar 2018 10:46:20 GMT, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>>Must dig out the ZX81 ...
>
> I have one of those as well. Got it from a ham radio friend who gave
> it away, 2 games, and 5 books. I had to buy a cassette recorder/player
> and 2 tapes. Doesn't like my LCD tv screen. Looks like I need an
> adapter for the connection. RG-6 on the tv, phono plug on the ZX-81
> end.

I recall LGR from YouTube did a review on the ZX81. Had many cables
connected to convert not only 220 Volts to 110, but also to get the video
signal on his LCD. He mentioned "looks like the ZX81 on life
support". I cannot locate the video right now, sorry.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

And, in fact, the 48-year-old 360/195 also helped in coining those terms, 
as it combined out-of-order execution with a cache.

On Sun, 04 Mar 2018 16:02:54 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
<a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

>On Sun, 04 Mar 2018 11:56:03 -0600, JimP wrote:
>>
>> On 4 Mar 2018 10:46:20 GMT, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>
>>>Must dig out the ZX81 ...
>>
>> I have one of those as well. Got it from a ham radio friend who gave
>> it away, 2 games, and 5 books. I had to buy a cassette recorder/player
>> and 2 tapes. Doesn't like my LCD tv screen. Looks like I need an
>> adapter for the connection. RG-6 on the tv, phono plug on the ZX-81
>> end.
>
>I recall LGR from YouTube did a review on the ZX81. Had many cables
>connected to convert not only 220 Volts to 110, but also to get the video
>signal on his LCD. He mentioned "looks like the ZX81 on life
>support". I cannot locate the video right now, sorry.

I can search there, I'll look. I think there is a cable I can get to
give my Amiga A1000 the video use of a lcd monitor. 320x400 though. I
can remember when that was considered hi-rez.

On Sun, 4 Mar 2018 13:14:24 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:
>
> And, in fact, the 48-year-old 360/195 also helped in coining those terms, 
> as it combined out-of-order execution with a cache.

Thanks for the update. Suppose if you'd still use them today (are they
still used today?) they could also be exploited?
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> writes:
> Thanks for the update. Suppose if you'd still use them today (are they
> still used today?) they could also be exploited?

while 360/195 & 370/195 had out-of-order ... it didn't have speculative
execution and stalled on conditional branches ... as a result, most
ordinary codes only ran at half speed. I got con'ed into participating
in hyperthreading project for 370/195 (that was never released)
... basically simulating two processor SMP (two i-streams some chance of
keeping processor 100% busy) ... ref to hyperthread
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

Sidebar: Multithreading

In summer 1968, Ed Sussenguth investigated making the ACS/360 into a
multithreaded design by adding a second instruction counter and a second
set of registers to the simulator. Instructions were tagged with an
additional "red/blue" bit to designate the instruction stream and
register set; and, as was expected, the utilization of the functional
units increased since more independent instructions were available.

IBM patents and disclosures on multithreading include:

US Patent 3,728,692, J.W. Fennel, Jr., "Instruction selection in a
two-program counter instruction unit," filed August 1971, and issued
April 1973.

US Patent 3,771,138, J.O. Celtruda, et al., "Apparatus and method for
serializing instructions from two independent instruction streams,"
filed August 1971, and issued November 1973. [Note that John Earle is
one of the inventors listed on the '138.]

"Multiple instruction stream uniprocessor," IBM Technical Disclosure
Bulletin, January 1976, 2pp. [for S/370]

... snip ...

the other issue, was that company was going to move everything to
virtual memory ... post about decision to go virtual memory for
everyting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

... and a virtual memory 370/195 would have been a completely new
machine. Don't see IBM mainframe doing out-of-order really again
until z196 (Jul2010, 50yrs later).

I've mentioned before San Jose Research had 370/195 running increasingly
aging MVT system (almost 1980 before replaced with 168-3 & MVS). Job
queue sometimes was 3month backlog.

Palo Alto Science Center had a program that ran 1hr on SJR 370/195
... but only got turn around every three months. They had 370/145
running VM/370 and did some checkpointing for the application and
started running offshift ... it took around month to complete a run
... but that was still better than the 3month turn around on SJR's
machine.

Disk Division was doing air bearing simulation for design of thin film
disk r/w heads (3370 fba) ... and even with expediated processing, it
was only getting something like two week turn arounds.
http://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/thin-film-heads-introduced-for-large-disks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head

Across the street in bldgs 14&15 ... they had dedicated mainframes for
DASD engineering testcell testings ... stand alone time scheduled around
the clock 7x24. I offered to rewrite input/output supervisor to make it
bullet proof and never fail ... so they could operate on-demand,
concurrent testing greatly improving productivity.  bldg 15 would get
early processor machine for testing ... and in late 70s got both early
engineering 3033 & 4341 (something like third or fourth operational
engineering machine).  Turns out even with multiple concurrent testcell
testing ... that only used one or two percent CPU. Setup so that air
bearing simulation could run on bldg. 15 3033 ... and although had
slightly less than half the throughput of 370/195 ... could still get a
few turn arounds a day ... rather than turn around every couple weeks
from the 370/195 (because the bldg 15 3033 otherwise had nearly unloaded
CPU compared to weeks & months workload backlog for 370/195).

posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

over the weekend did series of google satellite maps of san jose plant
site 1998-2017 (for retired IBM online group) ... shows whole lot of
bldgs being plowed under between June 2007 and end of July ... but bldgs
13, 14, 15 continued to stand. Then bldgs 13 & 15 plowed under early
2014 ... but bldg 14 still stands.

Next round was 1st half 80s ... demand for computing greeatly
outstripping traditional raised floor datacenters ... and saw loads of
4341s (& 3370 FBA disks) being placed out in departmental areas ...
sort of the leading edge of the coming distributed computing tsunami
(saw huge spike in vm370 installations ... in part because POK favorite
son mainframe operating system never supported FBA (still doesn't, even
though CKD disks haven't been made for decades, they still have
requirement for CKD simulation ... on industry standard fixed-block
disks).

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On Monday, March 5, 2018 at 11:46:31 AM UTC-7, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
 
> while 360/195 & 370/195 had out-of-order ... it didn't have speculative
> execution and stalled on conditional branches ... as a result, most
> ordinary codes only ran at half speed. I got con'ed into participating
> in hyperthreading project for 370/195 (that was never released)
> ... basically simulating two processor SMP (two i-streams some chance of
> keeping processor 100% busy) ... ref to hyperthread
> https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

Oh, no: it was really just an Atom.

John Savard

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> While Intel has certainly made lots of architectural improvements to
> its processors, after the detour of the Pentium 4, they did return
> to a line of development that goes back to the Pentium II and
> Pentium Pro. So the processor in your laptop today is closely
> related to it.

Could you put into moderately simple words how it is/was that the
Pentium 4  was a "detour"?  

Aside from my new(ish) laptop with a multi-core CPU, I have three P4
desktops (1 IBM, 2 DELL) that do everything I need.  The P II and P
III that I had didn't quite make it but the P4s are fine.

Digressing here, the IBM P4 has an odd quirk.  It came with an IDE HD
but has mobo plugs for 2 SATA drives.  After a HD failure, I used one
mobo plug for a new SATA drive.  Works but there's something weird
with the handling of large (say, 1G+) transfers.  CPU bogs down enough
to make the (Linux K2.4, X twm but no desktop) console unresponsive
for many seconds at a time.  Never managed to figure it out.  Aand
(unrelated to the HD?) playing a DVD (with box not connected to the
net) retards the clock so after watching a movie, the clock is several
hundred seconds slow.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 4:24:58 PM UTC-7, Mike Spencer wrote:

> Could you put into moderately simple words how it is/was that the
> Pentium 4  was a "detour"?  

> Aside from my new(ish) laptop with a multi-core CPU, I have three P4
> desktops (1 IBM, 2 DELL) that do everything I need.  The P II and P
> III that I had didn't quite make it but the P4s are fine.

The Pentium 4 had a reduced number of gate delays per cycle. This meant that it 
could achieve a higher frequency as measured in MHz, but instructions took more 
cycles.

That didn't make the higher frequency a mere marketing gimmick, as some comments 
at the time claimed. Since the Pentium 4, like its predecessors, was pipelined, 
it started a new instruction on every clock cycle, so it did do more work, in 
proportion to its faster frequency.

However, the higher frequency meant that more of the transistors on the chip 
were doing work - and therefore switching - at any one time. So the chip used 
significantly more power than chips based on the older design. That was all 
right for the Pentium 4 _itself_ - it didn't have heat or reliability problems.

But the Pentium 4 had the bad luck to come along just when Dennart scaling died 
out. So when Intel shrank the feature size on its chips, the transistors didn't 
get faster and use less power to the same extent as they had before with every 
process shrink.

So Intel had to go back to its earlier design to get something that would not 
overheat a chip packed with more of the new, smaller, transistors - since they 
weren't cooler transistors too. To get more performance, they started putting 
more cores on the chips instead (although they did manage a dual-core based on 
the Pentium 4 design, the Pentium D).

John Savard

On Tue, 2018-03-06, Mike Spencer wrote:
...
> Digressing here, the IBM P4 has an odd quirk.  It came with an IDE HD
> but has mobo plugs for 2 SATA drives.  After a HD failure, I used one
> mobo plug for a new SATA drive.  Works but there's something weird
> with the handling of large (say, 1G+) transfers.  CPU bogs down enough
> to make the (Linux K2.4, X twm but no desktop) console unresponsive
> for many seconds at a time.  Never managed to figure it out.

> And (unrelated to the HD?) playing a DVD (with box not connected to
> the net) retards the clock so after watching a movie, the clock is
> several hundred seconds slow.

The log files in /var/log/ may provide a clue ... perhaps the kernel
is spewing out messages about how it ran into trouble and had to fall
back to more primitive I/O mechanisms, and/or about missing
interrupts, and so on.

Perhaps an upgrade would help.  Kernel 2.4.x sounds more than ten
years old.  Happily, you can still get a twm-based desktop with
current Linux distributions.

On the other hand, I adopted SATA very late, and never used early SATA
motherboards; perhaps they were buggy.

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@  Oo  o.   .     .
\X/     snipabacken.se>   O  o   .

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> writes:
>On Tue, 2018-03-06, Mike Spencer wrote:
>...
>> Digressing here, the IBM P4 has an odd quirk.  It came with an IDE HD
>> but has mobo plugs for 2 SATA drives.  After a HD failure, I used one
>> mobo plug for a new SATA drive.  Works but there's something weird
>> with the handling of large (say, 1G+) transfers.  CPU bogs down enough
>> to make the (Linux K2.4, X twm but no desktop) console unresponsive
>> for many seconds at a time.  Never managed to figure it out.

I would guess that the BIOS AHCI settings were set to treat the
SATA drive as a legacy IDE drive, and thus DMA wasn't being used.

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 4:24:58 PM UTC-7, Mike Spencer wrote:
> 
>> Could you put into moderately simple words how it is/was that the
>> Pentium 4  was a "detour"?  

Thank you.  I understood nore than half of that.  Might get even more
on re-reading.

(Remainder left in for the record.)

> The Pentium 4 had a reduced number of gate delays per cycle. This
> meant that it could achieve a higher frequency as measured in MHz,
> but instructions took more cycles.
> 
> That didn't make the higher frequency a mere marketing gimmick, as
> some comments at the time claimed. Since the Pentium 4, like its
> predecessors, was pipelined, it started a new instruction on every
> clock cycle, so it did do more work, in proportion to its faster
> frequency.
> 
> However, the higher frequency meant that more of the transistors on
> the chip were doing work - and therefore switching - at any one
> time. So the chip used significantly more power than chips based on
> the older design. That was all right for the Pentium 4 _itself_ - it
> didn't have heat or reliability problems.
> 
> But the Pentium 4 had the bad luck to come along just when Dennart
> scaling died out. So when Intel shrank the feature size on its
> chips, the transistors didn't get faster and use less power to the
> same extent as they had before with every process shrink.
> 
> So Intel had to go back to its earlier design to get something that
> would not overheat a chip packed with more of the new, smaller,
> transistors - since they weren't cooler transistors too. To get more
> performance, they started putting more cores on the chips instead
> (although they did manage a dual-core based on the Pentium 4 design,
> the Pentium D).
> 
> John Savard

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

On Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 8:27:38 PM UTC-7, Mike Spencer wrote:
 
> Thank you.  I understood nore than half of that.  Might get even more
> on re-reading.

You're welcome.

Although I tried to be clear, I do realize that I probably assumed a lot of 
knowledge about the inner workings of computers, so I think that maybe I can do 
even better.

A long time ago, big computers made from transistors were pipelined, such as the IBM 7094 II or the SDS 9300. What this meant was basically the same thing as you might do when doing laundry - while one load of clothes is in the washer, the previous load is in the dryer.

With those early machines, the actions taken in response to a machine 
instruction were divided into three stages: Fetch, Decode, and Execute. While 
one instruction is actually being performed in the Execute stage, the next 
one can be Decoded by the computer, and the one after can be Fetched from 
memory.

This was simple and unproblematic; the Execute stages of the consecutive 
instructions still didn't overlap, so if one instruction depended on the 
result of the previous one - which is the usual way most programs are written 
- there would be no difficulty as a result.

Later on, though, more advanced computers were designed that attempted to 
speed things up even more, allowing more instructions to be worked on at 
once, by splitting up doing the instruction into smaller pieces.

If you split the Execute portion up into more than one piece, though, then 
you can't have consecutive instructions depending on one another. There are 
two ways around this - have a lot of registers, so that you can write your 
program with sequences of instructions working on different things that are 
interleaved - or use "out-of-order execution" with "register renaming" (or 
the equivalent, reservation stations) where the computer looks ahead for a 
part of your program doing something different, and interleaves it in, using 
extra registers to make up for the fact that the later part of the program is 
re-using the same registers.

The Pentium II did this, and so do Core processors, and so did the Pentium 4. 
The difference is that the Pentium 4 cut the Execute stage up into even 
smaller bits.

The other major piece of this story is that today's microprocessors are all 
made using CMOS. CMOS doesn't use as much power as other logic families. It 
takes power to switch from "on" to "off", but in between, when the input 
signals aren't changing, everything is either an open circuit or a closed 
circuit, with no resistors dissipating energy, so except for unavoidable 
things like leakage and wire resistance, it doesn't use power.

When you cut the Execute stage up into smaller bits - each bit, each pipeline 
stage, represents a *new input* for the logic gates in that stage. Stage 5 of 
an addition, on one clock cycle, was fed signals for adding the two numbers 
that a certain instruction was adding; on the next clock, it will be fed 
signals for the numbers a later add instruction will work on.

So if in design A, there were 16 logic gates per pipeline stage, and in 
design B, there were 12 logic gates per pipeline stage... in design A, 1/16 
of the transistors are "doing something" and making heat, and in design B, 
1/12 of them are "doing something" and making heat. So design B dissipates 1 
1/3 times as many watts as design A.

Now comes the part were the mysterious phrase "Dennard scaling", which you 
might not have heard before, comes in. It's not as commonly used as "Moore's 
Law", but it explains why processors haven't gotten faster than 4 GHz for 
years now, so they went to dual-core, four-core, and now eight cores with 
Ryzen instead.

Moore's Law - twice as many transistors on a chip every 18 months - was a 
result of them finding ways to make the transistors smaller and smaller as 
time went on.

Smaller transistors were also *better*. They didn't use as much power, and 
they worked faster. That was what was called "Dennard scaling".

Well, at about the 65nm process point, smaller transistors... no longer got 
as much better. After 65nm, as feature size shrunk still more, the 
transistors still got a little better, but not as much.

The Pentium 4 was an attempt to make a computer chip go faster by making a bigger fraction of its transistors work at any one time. That made it run hotter. While one might think that since transistors didn't start getting _worse_ as feature size got smaller, if it worked at one feature size, the design should have still worked in later processes as well...

basically, the Pentium 4 was skating close to the edge at the time it was 
brought out, and _if_ transistors weren't going to be getting better as fast 
as expected, instead of it being far from the edge in the next generation - 
and thus the kind of thing needed in the future, with later developments 
going even further in the same direction -

instead, it was always going to be on the edge, so it couldn't be changed 
much and improved still further. So it made more sense to go back to the 
Pentium III design, and find ways to improve that in a *different* direction 
that could still be further and further developed over time year after year 
to make better and better processors.

So they went to Core 2, Core 2 Duo, and eventually Core 2 Quad. Because the 
Pentium III design ran cooler, they could put four of them on one chip, while 
with the Pentium 4, they managed two.

Maybe this explains some things I glossed over previously.

John Savard

I missed breaking two paragraphs up into lines:

A long time ago, big computers made from transistors were pipelined, such as 
the IBM 7094 II or the SDS 9300. What this meant was basically the same thing 
as you might do when doing laundry - while one load of clothes is in the 
washer, the previous load is in the dryer.

The Pentium 4 was an attempt to make a computer chip go faster by making a 
bigger fraction of its transistors work at any one time. That made it run 
hotter. While one might think that since transistors didn't start getting 
_worse_ as feature size got smaller, if it worked at one feature size, the 
design should have still worked in later processes as well...

John Savard