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What distinguishes the maxicomputer class from the classes already presented? As illustrated in Chap. 1, one primary characteristic is price. The maxicomputer tends to be the largest machine that can be built in a given technology at a given time. The typical price for a maxicomputer in 1980 was greater than $1 million. Another characteristic used in Chap. 1 was a large virtual-address space. In 1980 this meant a virtual-address space size in excess of 16 Mbyte.

Maxicomputers usually have a rich set of data-types. Over the years the scientific data-types have progressed from short-word to long-word fixed-point scalars, to floating-point scalars, and finally to vectors and arrays. Commercial data-types have progressed from character-at-a-time to fixed-length instructions using descriptors and on to variable character strings. The PMS structure of maxicomputers has-evolved from a single Pc to 1-Pc-n-Pio, then to m-Pc-n-Pio, and on to C-Cio [data-base]-Cio [communication].

Not all maxicomputers satisfy all the characteristics. Several maxicomputers have just basic processing performance as a goal and have only high-performance implementations (as do the TI ASC and the CRAY-1), often with a limited range of peripherals and software. Other maxicomputers have a family of program- compatible implementations spanning a large performance range (as do the System/369-370 Model 91 and Model 195 and the VAX-11). Particular implementations of these families of machines may be high-performance; however, such implementations are constrained by the family ISP, which may not have provision for features related only to high performance. (As an example of such a feature, the TI ASC has a PREPARE TO BRANCH instruction that notifies instruction prefetch logic of an upcoming branch. By prefetching instructions down both possible branch paths this instruction can keep the instruction pipeline filled.)

This section examines five maxicomputers. The System/360 and the VAX-11 represent implementation families, while the CRAY-1 and the TI ASC are explicitly targeted for the very-high-performance market, where the goal is solely performance. The CDC 6600, while designed primarily for the high-performance market, can be assembled into lower-performance models if the high-performance central processor is deleted.

The IBM System/360 is the name given to a third-generation series of computers. More recent than the System/360 is the IBM System/370, which has been followed by cost-reduced implementations in the Series 3030 and Series 4300, which constitute the current primary IBM product line. Chapters 40 and 41 focus on the ISP of the original System/360. A discussion of the System/370 and the 3030 and 4300 series plus a comparison of the various models in the System/360, System/370, Series 3030, and Series 4300 is covered in Part 4, Sec. 5.

The following discussion covers only the processor. The instruction set consists of two classes, scientific ISP and data processing ISP, which operate on the different data-types. These data-types correspond roughly to the IBM 7090 and IBM 1401 [Bell and Newell, 1971]. For the scientific ISP there are half- and single-word integers; address integers; single, double, and quadruple (in the Model 85) floating point; and logical words (boolean vectors). For the data processing ISP there are address or single-word integers, multiple-byte strings, and multiple-digit decimal strings. These many data-types give the 360 strength in the minds of its various types of users. However, the many data-types, each performing few operations, may be of questionable utility and may constrain the ISP design in a way that a more complete operation set for a few basic data-types does not.

The ISP uses a general-register organization, as is common in virtually all computers in use during the 1970s. The ISP power can be compared with several similar multiple-register ISP structures, such as those of the UNIVAC 1107 and 1108; the CDC 6600 and 7600; the CRAY-1; the DEC PDP-6, PDP-10, PDP-11, and VAX-11; the Intel 8080 and 8086; the SDS Sigma 5 and Sigma 7; and the early general-register-organized machine Pegasus [Elliott et al., 1956]. Of these machines the System/360 scientific ISP appears to be the weakest in terms of instruction effectiveness and the completeness of its instruction set. As part of the Military Computer Family (MCF) project [Computer, 1977; CFA, 1977], a statistically designed experiment was conducted to compare the effectiveness of the Interdata 8/32, PDP-11, and IBM System/360 ISP. Sixteen programmers implemented test programs from a set of 12 benchmark descriptions. In all, 99 programs were written and measured. The results indicated that the System/360 required 21 percent and 46 percent more memory to store programs than the PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32, respectively. Further, the System/360 required 37 percent and 49 percent more bytes than the PDP-11 and Interdata 8/32, respectively, to be transferred between primary memory and the processor during execution of the test programs.

In the following discussion, it would be instructive to contrast

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