ctk@ecsvax.UUCP (06/07/84)
This morning I attended a sales presentation given by ATT at TUCC*. The
object was to sell us all 3b2's. The machine (at least the $10,000 model)
comes with .5M of ram, a 10M hard disk, and a 720k floppy. The operating
system is a subset of System V UNIX (trademarks ... etc.). A simple
floating point benchmark was run on the machine and it looks considerably
slower on floats than an IBM PC with an 8087, a Sage II, and many other
boxes that sell for half the price or less. Languages cost about $300-$400
extra. No programming language at all comes with the machine.
I asked if hardware floating point support was available and was
told that it was not (even for the larger 3b5) but they were thinking
about it. For floating point work it looks like we're all better off with
8087 equipped IBM PC's .
I asked one of the ATT people if he could tell me a little about
the architecture of the 32000 processor. He said that he couldn't tell
me anything about the architecture, instruction set, etc. as a matter
of ATT policy. He also said that he had not been told that this would
ever change. It seems to me that this is insane. Who (certainly not me)
would ever buy a computer whose innards were top secret? Maybe they're
trying to sell these things as dedicated word processors. As to the 3b5
and larger machines, will anyone buy a $100K+ mini with top secret
architecture? I was pretty disappointed in the 3b2 but was even more
disappointed in this policy of secrecy. Is this why no details of the
WE32000 processors appear in net.arch?
* TUCC is a local computer center.
C.T. Kelley
Dept. of Math.
N.C. State U.
Raleigh, N.C. 27650
decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!ctkemigh@ecsvax.UUCP (06/07/84)
<>
I also attend the mentioned demonstration of the 3B2-300 computer. In
addition to Kelley's comments, I have the following impressions:
1) AT&T has a long way to go in learning how to market computers. In a
presentation to ~30 technical people, there were NO technical people
on AT&T's team. They apparently came to the meeting expecting to talk
to vice-president types.
2) Even with a full complement of utilities software, many utilities that
we come to expect were missing. For example, as far as we could tell,
there was no pagination utility (e.g., more, page). Of course, none
of the AT&T staff really knew what utilities were included, and manuals
were not available (man and the man pages also are not there).
3) To an audience that was largely academic, they showed a lack of
understanding of how universities operate. They have not decided on
an academic discount, so the told us that if we bought one at full
price they would rewrite the contract after the decision was made and
give us a rebate!!! Try getting that past your Vice President for
Business.
I was not as disappointed with the 3B2 as Kelley--after all it was announced
only 6 weeks ago. I expect many of the deficiencies to disappear in the near
future.
--
Ted H. Emigh Genetics and Statistics, North Carolina State U, Raleigh NC
USENET: {akgua decvax duke ihnp4 unc}!mcnc!ecsvax!emigh
ARPA: decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!emigh@BERKELEYguy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (06/09/84)
Read the article "The Operating System and Language Support Features of
the BELLMAC-32", in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Architectural
Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, published as
ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 10, Number 2, March 1982
and ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 4, April 1982. It doesn't contain
an opcode map and description, but it does give a number of details -
it's got a sort of post-PDP-11 architecture (general registers, instructions
consisting of opcode+operands, the latter being specified by "addressing
modes", etc.). 10 general purpose registers, and the PC, SP, FP, and AP
in the VAX-11 fashion. So read the article to the AT&T person - it'll
be fun if it makes their head explode... (Admittedly, HP is even more
closed-mouthed about their Focus chip, so AT&T isn't the only offender
here.)
One little tidbit - I've seen the disassembler code for the 3B20, and it's
one of the biggest I've ever seen. I get the impression from it that
it's a lot of complexity in the instruction set to no great benefit -
it's slightly less space-efficient than VAX-11 code (the VAX-11 disassembler
consists of about two pages of code and a gigantic table) and the 3B20
performs at about the same level as an 11/780. I don't know how similar
the 3B20 and the WE32000 are; I've heard that they are and I've heard that
they really aren't.
Guy Harris
{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guyguy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (06/09/84)
> 1) AT&T has a long way to go in learning how to market computers. In a > presentation to ~30 technical people, there were NO technical people > on AT&T's team. They apparently came to the meeting expecting to talk > to vice-president types. > 2) Even with a full complement of utilities software, many utilities that > we come to expect were missing. For example, as far as we could tell, > there was no pagination utility (e.g., more, page). Of course, none > of the AT&T staff really knew what utilities were included, and manuals > were not available (man and the man pages also are not there). > 3) To an audience that was largely academic, they showed a lack of > understanding of how universities operate. None of this is really surprising, given where AT&T is coming from. As Al Capp, I believe, once said "You can change your government - but have you ever tried to change your phone company?" They can't rely on everybody who wants a computer just assuming that you have to get it from the Phone Company. I suspect that there are a lot of habits learned in the Old Days that have yet to be fully unlearned yet. As for the people there not knowing about the details of their product, the best story I heard in that regard was about somebody interested in UNIX boxes who called up the local ATTIS office asking about the 3B. Their response was "What's a 3B?" When he replied, "One of the new line of computers you announced yesterday, and advertised in full page ads in several newspapers," they said "Well, nobody told us about them." I'm sure they'll learn, but don't expect miracles overnight. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy