A description of the IBM 7074 system

A new data processing system, the IBM 7070, was described at the 1958 Eastern Joint Computer Conference. Recent progress has resulted in the creation of an expanded family of 7070 systems, exemplified by the announcement of the IBM 7074 system.

The 7074 represents a dramatic new approach to data processing system growth, and is the second major step in the 7070 data system family. It is not an entirely new system, but rather an improvement within the 7070 framework. It enables a customer whose workload has outgrown his 7070 equipment to upgrade his system over a weekend, thus achieving multiplied performance without reprogramming and without excessive disruption of his operation.

Specifically, the increased performance is achieved by use of:

1. A new, high-performance arithmetic and program unit called the 7104 high-speed processor.

2. Improved-performance storage units, the 7301 models 3 and 4, which operate on a four-μ sec cycle instead of the six-μ sec cycle used with the basic 7070.

These units are substituted for their counterparts in the 7070 system.

Compared to a two-channel 7070 system using 729 IV tape drives, a 7074 of the same configuration has the following performance characteristics:

Internal performance on commercial work: 6 × 7070

Thruput or job performance on commercial work: 2 × 7070

Floating point performance on scientific work: 10 × 7070

Internal performance is a measure of instruction-execution time. It is measured on the basis of the mix of instructions executed in a group of programs considered typical of commercial applications.

Thruput or job performance considers, in addition to instruction-execution time, the time expended in magnetic-tape input/output operations. A typical mix of commercial jobs--including sorting, merging, high and low activity-file maintenance, and editing--provides the basis for this comparison.

Floating point performance is measured on the basis of a typical group of arithmetic and logical instructions encountered in many scientific problems. It is essentially a measure of internal speed.