Article 7038 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!216-164-247-252 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: TOPS-10 SMP [Was Re: The computer jargon file] Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 12:44:52 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 359 Message-ID: <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net> References: X-Trace: 2xvevuo1FydcWc+yHTvk3l3Ez7YGEIUYAgA3ECQ+4ho= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Mar 2000 14:20:44 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:4424 alt.sys.pdp10:7038 alt.folklore.computers:153000 In article <8ao8r4$qns$3@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >In article <38c4b9be$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com>, > inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote: >>>Joe Smith? Did you put the story in your collection? >> >>It might be in one of these two files: >> http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/usenet/history >> http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/usenet/stories >> >>I'm afraid that the stuff in /pdp10/usenet/ is not very well organized. > >'s OK. I managed to find my copy. I've done an edit so >I'd appreciate if you would substitute the new edit for the >old edit. Not much changed...a few typos and the 1.8 to a 0.8. >I still haven't figured out names of people and whatever else >I marked with a question mark. > >I'll post it using my follow-up icon but I'm going to change >the title. I've reread it and it's not written very well. >I don't have the energy to do a rewrite. > >My apologies to those who are reading it again; I'm feeling >better about reposting it because there's a new old fart on >the block who just started reading the newsgroup. [begin story] [Version 0.4] ;Edit 0.4 Fix typos and change to 1 + 1 = 0.8 Once upon a time there was a company affectionately called DEC that attracted and hired productive people. Instead of tying their efforts down with rules and paperwork, this company encouraged its people to think and create. It allowed people to do real work. We made fine stuff and we made money selling that stuff. Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) was a tightly coupled system architecture that allowed any CPU to do any task, as opposed to a master/slave architecture. TOPS-10 SMP had few exceptions, such as setting the time at system startup. To indicate that this was a new software design, the major monitor version number that implemented this architecture was incremented from 6.xx to 7.xx. We called this monitor, the piece of the operating system that was always resident in core, 7.01. Our customers first saw SMP as V7.01. The fact that they ever saw it is a testament of the high regard that DEC had for two men, James M. Flemming (JMF) and Antony Wachs (TW); a respect that was eliminated in a company known as Digital. This is the story of what happened, based on personal observation and what was told to me by JMF and TW. Sometime, during the 6.03 development cycle and the advent of the KL10 CPU, Jim noticed that the speed of service to users was not very good. After we shipped 6.03, Jim did his usual "stare at the SYSDPY" displays and created a performance data base (I think with the help of CDO) for further performance analysis. SYSDPY was a program that displayed static and variable system data on a video terminal; Chuck O'Toole did some of the formatting of SYSDPY and also wrote a FORTRAN program that analyzed the data ??is this correct, Chuck?? What he found absolutely floored him. When one added a second KL10 CPU, one did not get twice the service; his analyses showed that one only got 0.8 the expected performance. He made slides and gave a talk about this for DECUS stating that 1 KL + 1 KL = 0.8 KLs. Now, if there was anything that TOPS-10 developers couldn't stand, it was degradation of performance. JMF and TW worked the 3:00-12:00 shift so they could have the PDP-10 systems stand alone, and probably started to talk about improvements during those wee small hours of the A.M. when not much else was going on. Since I was working on the accounting project in another part of the building, I couldn't listen in on all of their brainstorming sessions. I remember JMF had to work really hard to convince TW that bit-diddling the master/slave implementation wouldn't give the performance improvements that JMF wanted. He firmly believed that adding another CPU to a configuration should give the system a 100% increase of work, not 80%. Hence, SMP was born. There was a flurry of activity. The tasks that had to be done in order to implement SMP were written on the backs of unpunched IBM computer cards. Keeping lists and marking changes in listings was the best use of cards in DEC's opinion. One of those tasks was to make each device driver reentrant so that the code could be run at any time on any CPU; the data and the code had to be separated. The two men split up the work by negotiation. One of those negotiations was deciding who would do FILSER, the file service routines. As a result of those negotiations, Jim was obliged to do a lot of device drivers just so Tony would do FILSER. In those days, nobody touched the disk service routines without great trepidation, lots of magic incantations and the blessings of TW who, at the time, was considered the father of TOPS-10 due to his longevity in the group. Jim didn't want any part of the file system work. I don't remember how they decided who would do SCNSER, the terminal I/O module, since neither one wanted any part of that piece of TOPS-10. I suspect that there was probably a wish for RCC (Bob Clements) to come back but, instead, we managed to hire somebody. This was an accomplishment since the part of the PDP-10 development budget alloted to TOPS-10 was very, very small. I remember that Jim would use his weekend work time to make device drivers such as DTASER, the DECtape device driver, reentrant. Jim always went into work Saturday and Sunday mornings but he only did "fun stuff" on the weekends, his play time. Those development days were lively with laughter, fights, ups and downs. A big up was the day that the guys got the monitor to print its dot after TW ran his macroes over the sources; we used this major code adjustment time as an opportunity to get rid of all the feature test switches that had become a pain in the ass. There were just some things that we didn't want customers to be able to turn on and there were some things that we didn't want customers to turn off. These feature test switches were an archaic legacy of DEC's support commitments. A big down was the day that the guys finally figured out the reason for a particular set of crashes was a race condition caused by the KL not having a write-thru cache. That was a time when the guys thought that they wouldn't be able to ever implement SMP; if a solution wasn't found, we had to can the project. Jim finally got the idea of the spin-lock mechanism to solve that problem. JMF and TW were told many years later that this could have been patented but the lawyers decided it wasn't worth the trouble since the sources had been shipped. Back in those days, if the sources were shipped, the thinking was that the contents was public domain. That thinking changed but I don't remember why (if I ever knew). The development cycle had reached the stage when Jim and Tony were ready to talk about the product at Spring DECUS, 1978. ??I think this is the correct year but would like some verification?? We did all the preparations for the talk. I was the one who did all the overheads and, believe me, getting JMF to keep those slides readable was an effort. We attended the party-line talks; these were the pre-DECUS meetings where the product managers told us what we could talk about, and, more importantly, what we couldn't talk about. It one wanted to go to DECUS, one had to attend one of these party-line sessions. We were to find out later that these sessions were not complete. Jim and Tony were very excited about telling the TOPS-10 customers about SMP. In those days, the corporate climate with respect to TOPS-10 was not good. We felt like we were being attacked from all sides so the anticipation of presenting a really good idea to our customers was important to them. Jim and Tony did their talk about SMP. Then we went to the product panel session. Jim and Tony sat together towards the front of the room. I sat three chairs down from our manager, Chuck Turley; the chairs between Chuck and me were vacant. The product manager, Dave ?????, gave the presentation. One of his slides said that 6.04 was the last TOPS-10 monitor. I can't begin to describe the impact that that slide had on the audience. After some questions, one customer asked, "Is 6.04 the last TOPS-10 monitor?" Dave said, "Yes." The same customer then asked, "Is SMP in 6.04?" Dave said, "No." I asked Chuck if he knew that this was coming. He nodded his head miserably. I said, "Do you understand what that implies?" Again, he nodded his head. I said, "Did Jim and Tony know about this?" He shook his head. I said, "Why didn't you tell them?" He said, miserably, "We didn't know how to tell them." The meeting broke up shortly after that. I sought out Jim and Tony and we retired to a nook in the bar. I didn't know how to comfort them; I was in shock myself. I must digress here for just a minute to mention that most of the customers left us alone in our misery. I would like to thank them for that small gesture of understanding. We didn't want to hobnob just then. [As a warning to the reader, I would like to make one thing clear before I continue. TW was the only person in the whole world throughout all time that was allowed to call me Babs (he pronounced it Bobs); Jim never even tried. So, just because it's now in print, does not mean that it will be permissable to call me that name.] At one point, Tony asked, "What are we going to do, Babs?" He had such a lost look on his face that I told him the truth. I said, "Fuck'em." You see, I was pissed; I was livid; I was beyond expressing my anger and disgust with the way these guys had been treated by our management. How dare they not tell Jim and Tony what was being planned. How dare they let Jim and Tony go to DECUS and talk about SMP, giving the customers the idea of a hint of deceit and the impression of ineptness. How dare they allow Jim and Tony to embarrass themselves because of their [the managers'] cowardice? I was furious. And, besides that, they were cancelling TOPS-10 which was a revenue backbone of Digital Equipment Corporation. So, back to the bar scene. I said, "Fuck'em." Tony said, "Yea. Yea. YEA. FUCK'EM". Then Jim said, "You know, TW, I always wanted to have a calling card that said, 'Have EDDT, will travel'. One of my favorite TV shows was _Have Gun, Will Travel_ and I always thought that the slogan 'Have EDDT, will travel' was sexy." Tony got a thoughtful look on his face and the guys started talking about a business where their expertise in debugging and developing TOPS-10 could be exchanged for money. We started planning then and there. SMP would be delayed for a while but the game plan was to get a customer to allow us to use their hardware so that further development could continue; we had our eye on the ORNL site for that. Since Jim and Tony both had families, a source of income was required. We figured that plenty of customers would want them to solve their problems. We figured that we wouldn't have to advertise; word-of-mouth would be sufficient. My part would be to take the phone calls, handle the scheduling, and be responsible for the financial end of the business. If anything else came up, I would handle that, too. Picking up all the loose ends was already one of my functions at DEC. On top of that, I would keep my job with DEC and garner lists and information about customers with problems. Then Tony said he had to go home (his beer limit was two). I do not know what was said in the early morning sessions that JMF and TW must have had. That Friday, JMF and TW agreed that we all go away and think about the proposal and talk with the wives. A meeting with the wives was set for that next Sunday night at TW's house. It was agreed that, if even one person voted nay to the proposal, we wouldn't go ahead with it. Meanwhile, I had to figure out how I could answer my phone at home (my personal phone number was going to be the customer contact) while I was working in Marlboro. I started to think about the financial aspects of running a business. Neither Jim nor Tony knew the rudiments of business management. Jim didn't know how not to spend money, and Tony didn't know how to spend money. I quailed at the thought of having to argue business sense to either of these men. I began to have my doubts about the success of this business venture. Then I thought about the impact of my saying nay on these two men. I didn't want to hurt them; a vote of nay would crush them. It was conceivable that I would lose their friendship. It was guaranteed that I would get undercut at work. I took the coward's way out and decided to vote last. If one of the wives said nay, I wouldn't have to vote. We had the Meeting With the Wives that Sunday night; Jim and Tony gave it this title. After a lot of discussion, it was time to vote. The wives voted yea. Tony and Jim voted yea. Then they all looked at me and I wanted to melt through the virtual hole in the floor. With a sinking feeling, I voted nay. Jim and Tony were shocked. I gave them my reasons saying that I didn't think that we knew how to run a business. After a little more discussion, TW ended the meeting saying there wasn't anymore to be said. I went home. Tomorrow was Monday, another work day. That next morning, JMF and TW got together to talk again. I don't know what they said; I didn't really want to ever know what they said. They did decide to go to their manager and told me so. I said, "If I were you, I'd go to the top and not waste a damn second on middle management." TW suggested the next level up. I suggested they start with Ken. JMF and TW comprimised and got an appointment with the head guy of LCG (I don't remember his name and would appreciate help with this one). Those were two very nervous people. They didn't tell anybody about the meeting (their normal habit would have been to tell at least the supervisor). They spent their time drinking coffee (which didn't help nerves), walking around, and fussing. These men never fussed. Finally, the late morning meeting happened. They sat down with this guy and told him about the "6.04 is the last TOPS-10 monitor" announcement. The guy said, "Yea, so?" Jim and Tony said, "What do you plan for us to work on after 6.04?". Jim and Tony proceeded to tell him that they were seriously thinking about leaving DEC. Now, apparently, that thought hadn't crossed management's mind when planning this outrageous announcement. I can't explain the idiocy; there are times when people just don't make sense to me and this was one of those times. The managers (those directly above Jim and Tony) who did think this thought, didn't say anything. The politics of getting rid of TOPS-10 were very thick and tricky then. So silence was the easiest and safest course to take at that time; I understand this thinking. After that meeting, as TW would say, the fit hit the shan. It was not a goal to lose Jim and Tony. At that time, there were still people who were aware that the products these guys produced made money. I do know that somebody pointed out that most of the budget for TOPS-10 involved Jim and Tony. If they were going to be funded anyway, they might as well do something like SMP (they were not welcome in the -20 group and they did not want to work on TOPS-20). So, to keep these two men as employees, DEC turned the TOPS-10 SMP project back on. From that time on, I did everything I could to smooth the efforts of the TOPS-10 monitor group in my spare time. That work involved from being a sounding board at design sessions to getting cups of coffee for the guys during intense debugging efforts. It was an interesting time; it was an exacting time; it was hell; it was heaven. It was frustrating; it was satisfying. It was rarely boring; it was life. When Tony Wachs died, I cried for three days and three nights. Then, for three months after that, I cried whenever Jim wasn't around because he didn't like to see me cry. When Jim Flemming died, I cried for two years and a month. These men were my best friends. I still miss them. [end of story] Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. Article 7040 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!feeder.via.net!206.86.34.12.MISMATCH!nuq-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!ord-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP [Was Re: The computer jargon file] From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) Organization: Everett Associates X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) References: <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Lines: 49 Message-ID: Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:34:37 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 157.238.73.17 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: ord-read.news.verio.net 953224477 157.238.73.17 (Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:34:37 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:34:37 GMT Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:4426 alt.sys.pdp10:7040 alt.folklore.computers:153011 In article <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says lots and lots of stuff about the political climate at DEC around the time of 6.04/7.01... > Barb, I really enjoyed your missive. As you know I was close to both TW and JMF. I shared an office with Tony as early as 1966, and actually interviewed Jim when he was looking to join DEC. Jim and I subsequently shared an office soon after he came to Maynard. I left DEC (and the TOPS-10 Monitor group) an 1974 to take a job with First Data; subsequently acquired by ADP. By 1978 (the era you discussed), ADP was busy creating a product based upon the KS-10. We were a TOPS-10 shop and it was abundantly clear that DEC placed no importance in supporting TOPS-10 on the KS. Through my inside contacts (TW and JMF) I learned that although DEC was promising ADP a KS version of TOPS-10, no one was actually working on it. Over the period when we (ADP) were negotiating and working closely with DEC to get TOPS-10 implemented on the KS, TW and JMF were bringing SMP to fruition. As our (ADP Network Services) entire business was based upon TOPS-10 (and as the largest TOPS-10 shop then extant) we were VERY concerned about what we perceived to be a lack of serious committment to TOPS-10. Think about it; here was DEC's largest single 36-bit customer negotiating to buy over one hundred KS-10s; and DEC is clearly not committed to the operating system upon which we totally dependent. Not very far-sighted thinking, was it? Seeing the handwriting on the wall, we proposed buying TOPS-10 in total from DEC, a proposal they took seriously. We actually had a number of meetings on the subject. High on the list of concerns was the disposition of personnel, TW and JMF included. Had this gone to completion they might have just ended up being employees of ADP. In the end, common sense prevailed at DEC and a re-committment was made to TOPS-10; at least in the short term. We were never privy to DEC internal thinking, we just found out that at some point TOPS-10 was off the table. It was probably during this period of corporate schizophrenia that the infamous "6.04 is the end of the line" pronouncement was made. Had DEC stuck to that policy ADP would probably have acquired the rights to TOPS-10 and continued its development. I'm pretty certain that at some point over the intervening years I shared that story with TW and JMF, but don't know if it ever received wide distribution. I'd be curious to know if either of them ever shared it with BAH. -- jeverettwwacom (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett Article 7134 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!nuq-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!ord-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: TOPS-10 and ADP (was Re: TOPS-10 SMP...) From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) Organization: Everett Associates X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) References: <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <8b2gad$brs$1@bob.news.rcn.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Lines: 36 Message-ID: Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 15:53:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 157.238.70.249 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: ord-read.news.verio.net 953481207 157.238.70.249 (Sun, 19 Mar 2000 15:53:27 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 15:53:27 GMT Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:4508 alt.sys.pdp10:7134 alt.folklore.computers:153237 In article <8b2gad$brs$1@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says... > >>C'mon Sarr, weren't you still around when we were >>creating the SMP KS-10? That >>project took YEARS. Of course in the end it didn't >>produce much revenue. :-) >> >How the hell did you do that? I thought Lewine made sure that >SMP was precluded. Don't know how Don would have done that. All it took was a shared memory interface, courtesy of those nice folks at Systems Concepts (Mike, Stu, and company). >On a slightly more serious note....Would Jim and Tony have >been able to work for ADP? My only exposure to them was >via First Data before ADP bought them...and they had weird >ideas of what a general purpose timesharing would do. One >of the guys there was my chairman for the Usage Accounting >DECUS session. The weird idea was that we could use it to make money. It wasn't until I joined First Data (soon acquired by ADP) that I learned how little DEC understood about the commercial use of a PDP-10. DEC's TOPS-10 accounting software was clearly designed for an academic environment because it was woefully inadaquate for commercial use. Over the years I was with ADP it was clear from my discussions with my old friends at DEC that they never really understood the reasons for multiple billing algorithms. At ADP we were businessmen first and technologists second. Note that ADP continues its unprecedented record of earnings per share growth (longest in the history of the NYSE), while DEC no longer exists. -- jeverettwwacom (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett Article 7091 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-40 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP [Was Re: The computer jargon file] Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 10:20:12 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 59 Message-ID: <8avqt4$46d$2@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <38D2902C.8E3AE54@cfht.hawaii.edu> X-Trace: AMhgycflDKIP2dmfWSgO2XS6f359BtiTqNKsYSNkKYw= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Mar 2000 11:56:20 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:4476 alt.sys.pdp10:7091 alt.folklore.computers:153166 In article <38D2902C.8E3AE54@cfht.hawaii.edu>, Jim Thomas wrote: >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > >> >> /BAH>My apologies to those who are reading it again; I'm feeling >> /BAH>better about reposting it because there's a new old fart on >> /BAH>the block who just started reading the newsgroup. > >Being the "old fart" in question and wanting to comment but not >having posted with Netscrape before, we'll see how this >comes out .... :-) It appears to have bopped over here OK. For those of you who may not remember the real name, may I introduce Nothead to you all. > >> >> /BAH>Sometime, during the 6.03 development cycle and the advent >> /BAH>of the KL10 CPU, Jim noticed that the speed of service to >> /BAH>users was not very good. After we shipped 6.03, Jim did >> /BAH>his usual "stare at the SYSDPY" displays and created a >> /BAH>performance data base (I think with the help of CDO) for >> /BAH>further performance analysis. >> > >Hmmm, you mention 1978 - that sounds right for 7.01 but not for >the KL. I worked at Marlboro in 1974 and 1975 and the 1025/1026 >(I think those were the serial numbers) appeared while I was there. >I know this was the case 'cause I got to fix BASIC which, being a >good, old style program, made use of the extra bits in BLT pointers >which were being absconded with by the new segment stuff. One of the flavors of 6-level monitors supported KLs. However, they ran master/slave and turned out to be, IIRC, slower than master/slave KI when comparing actually work getting done. > >> >> /BAH>What he found absolutely floored him. When one added a >> /BAH>second KL10 CPU, one did not get twice the service; his >> /BAH>analyses showed that one only got 0.8 the expected >> /BAH>performance.Those development days were lively with laughter, >> /BAH>fights, ups and downs. A big up was the day that >> /BAH>the guys got the monitor to print its dot after TW >> /BAH>ran his macroes over the sources; > >Another high point was the first time 1025 (the "boot CPU") was >powered down and 1026 kept running :-) Yea. Looking back on it now, we quickly got used to reconfiguring systems on the fly for stand-alone, field service, etc. Just for clarification, 1025 wasn't the "other" CPU. It was 1042. 1025 was the hardware engineering CPU. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.