Amdahl 470

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Amdahl 470V/6 system [1]

Amdahl 470,
Amdahl Corporation's first machine, the Amdahl 470V/6 shipped in 1975, was a plug compatible mainframe computer designed by former IBM Fellow and chief architect of IBM System/360 Gene Amdahl. Competing with IBM in the mainframe market, it was a less expensive, more reliable and faster replacement for the System 370/168. By purchasing an Amdahl 470 and plug-compatible peripheral devices from third-party manufacturers, customers could now run S/360 and S/370 applications under VM without buying actual IBM hardware [2].

Technology

The Amdahl 470V/6 uses large scale integration (LSI) semiconductor technology, bipolar emitter-coupled logic (ECL) in the CPU, metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) in main memory, and ultra high speed bipolar components for the cache memory [3].

Processor

The 32-bit CPU contains 16 general purpose registers, eight floating point registers, eight scratchpad and control registers, and consists of four logical, independent units. The instruction unit implements an instruction pipeline with fetch, decode, execute, memory and register access stages and coordinates with other units. The execution unit performs the arithmetic and logical instructions, the storage unit controls high-speed buffer and main memory requests, the channel unit I/O requests [4]. The CPU archives 3.5 MIPS [5].

Chess Programs

See also

Publications

  • Allan R. Emery, Michael T. Alexander (1975). A Performance Comparison of the Amdahl 470V/6 and the IBM 370/168. Computer Measurement Group, October 1975, San Francisco, California, pdf » IBM 370
  • Alexis J. Pittman (1975). The Amdahl 470v/6: The Latest in Computer Technology. Michigan Technic, Vol. XCIV, No. 2, November 1975

External Links

Amdahl Computers brochure
Amdahl 470V/6 Computer - Multi-Chip Carrier
Amdahl 470V/6 Computer - CPU

References

  1. The Amdahl 470/V6 was a powerful mainframe computer introduced in 1975 that ran the popular IBM System/360 family of programs. In 1978, the microprocessor-based program Sargon defeated Tony Marsland’s chess program Awit running on this type of machine. Even though the 470/V6 was by then over a decade old, this was still a dramatic development and showed the growing power of microcomputers, image from The Computer History Museum
  2. Gene Amdahl - The IBM & Amdahl years - Wikipedia
  3. Alexis J. Pittman (1975). The Amdahl 470v/6: The Latest in Computer Technology. Michigan Technic, Vol. XCIV, No. 2, November 1975
  4. Alexis J. Pittman (1975). The Amdahl 470v/6: The Latest in Computer Technology. Michigan Technic, Vol. XCIV, No. 2, November 1975
  5. Amdahl 470V/6 Computer - CPU from The Computer History Museum

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