Modern cell phone vs. Lunar Lander computer

[joema]

@Francis_Vaughan

…Steve Bales got the Medal of Freedom however. But Jack was a real star. The story of the 1201/1202 errors is one I used to tell my software engineering classes about. It was a perfect exemplar of how extrinsic matters can affect software. If I were teaching operating systems, the design of the AGC real time kernel would be right up there, and again, 1201/1202 a core example.

Jack Garman receiving NASA awards for his work during the Apollo 11 mission. Also shown is the hand-written reference sheet he devised after a failed simulation just prior to the mission. He and Steve Bales referenced this during the landing: https://joema.smugmug.com/Aerospace/Jack-Garman-Apollo-11/n-NVmMvz/

[jz78817]

@t-bonham@scc.net

To quote Seymour Cray himself: “Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.”

yep. PC architectures have typically had fast CPUs with slow I/O. about a decade ago, you could still pay tens of thousands of dollars for an SGI workstation with a MIPS CPU which would get its ass handed to it by the contemporary AMD and Intel chips. But if your workload demanded high I/O performance, the SGI system architecture (XIO) was head and shoulders above.