eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) (03/21/91)
My officemate George Michael informs me Sid Fernbach has passed away
[about a month ago, in his sleep]. I didn't know Sid very well, but
I think I can say he will be missed.
I met Sid when my Division Chief asked me help with the now defunct
local ACM/SIGBIG (Mary Fowler chair). Sid was one who pushed for formation.
During the earliest days of the Usenet, when net.arch was the real name,
when people asked where did the DOE's Class system of rating computer
system was broached, I evoked Sid's name. The Cray-1 was the class Class VI
machine, the CDC 7600 and the ILLIAC IV were Class V, etc. When questions
about specific machine ratings occurred (as they did more than once),
I was able to ask both George and Sid (questions for the Mount?)
for their opinions:
"What's a VAX-11/780?" "It doesn't rate, it's not a supercomputer."
"What's an Apple II?" "Class 1/2" [facitiously]
I also had a chance to ask serious questions:
"Now that the Cray-2 [or ETA-10] is out, what are they?"
"Class VI machines." He later changed the Cray-2
to a Class VII.
He went on to edit a book:
%A Sidney Fernbach, ed.
%T Supercomputers, Class VI Systems, Hardware and Software
%I North-Holland
%D 1986
%K book, text, cray, cdc cyber, data flow, NEC SX-2, Fujitsu VP-200,
Hitachi 810/20, vector processing,
%X A collection of papers surveying existing computer architectures
rather than newer proposed supercomputer architectures.
%X A book from one of the men who set up the "Class system" of the DOE.
If the conversation ever turned too hardware oriented, I injected
"What should the operating system on a supercomputer be?
"Not, Unix."
"CTSS [Cray Time Sharing System] then?"
"Yes."
"What about on the machines surrounding them? The
front-ends, the workstations, the PCs?" [Sid didn't believe in
workstations or PCs at the time.]
"CTSS is adequate for all of them. Put it on all of them."
"And the editor?"
... (some people can guess)
Sid received numerous awards from all sorts of professional societies.
IEEE COMPCON was always giving him something. 8^)
I was at an ACM Chapter meeting when it was announced we weren't having
a speaker that evening: Sid had suffered a stroke (several years back).
I saw him one more time after that (at his make up meeting).
Despite the old dinosaur's opinions, I will miss Sid.
Follow-ups to comp.sys.super.
--e. nobuo utsunomiya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
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