The STC ZEBRA and CPU meters

From: Huw Davies <Huw.Davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au>
Date: Mon Jan 14 05:25:25 2002

At 11:50 PM 13/01/2002 -0800, Derek Peschel wrote:

>And so the computer had a moving-needle efficiency meter on the front panel,
>which presumably integrated a series of pulses (similar to the circuit
>Tony described earlier). Or I suppose it could have divided the rate
>of instruction execution by the rate of drum rotation (since there was
>a timing track on the drum anyway). 100% efficiency was attainable
>but only by simple programs such as a parity check of the drum.

A lot of work was done with drum based machines to optimize the layout of
instructions on the drum to ensure that the next instruction would be
coming up real soon now on the drum. I suspect that this was all done
manually - these days it would just be another task for the compiler :-)

Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au
                      | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
                      | air, the sky would be painted green"
Received on Mon Jan 14 2002 - 05:25:25 GMT