
Retirement video for the Philco 212 Mainframe Computer - MagicPropmaker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwOkVgGw1z8
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beloch
"After Philco was purchased by Ford Motor Company, the Model 212 was
introduced in 1962[19] and released in 1963. It had 65,535 words of 48-bit
memory. Initially made with 6-microsecond core memory, it had better
performance than the IBM 7094 transistor computer. It was later upgraded in
1964 to 2-microsecond core memory, which gave the machine floating-point
performance greater than the IBM 7030 Stretch computer. A Model 213 was
announced in 1964 but never built. By that time competition from IBM had made
the Philco computer operations no longer profitable for Ford, and the division
was closed down.[20][21]

The Model 212 could carry out a floating-point multiplication in 22
microseconds. Each word contained two 24-bit instructions with 16 bits of
address information and eight bits for the opcode. There were 225 different
valid opcodes in the Model 212; invalid opcodes were detected and halted the
machine. The CPU had an accumulator register of 48 bits, three general-purpose
registers of 24 bits, and 32 index registers of 15 bits. Main memory size
ranged from 4K words to 64K words. Only the first model had a magnetic drum
memory; later editions used tape drives.

The Model 212 weighed about 6,500 pounds (3.3 short tons; 2.9 t)."

\--Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco_computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco_computers))

So, for multiplication at least, the 212 was capable of 0.045 MFLOPS and 15.4
FLOPS/kg.. FLOPS/kg seems like a fun stat that we should probably calculate
more often. The Earth's global computing capacity at the end of 2015 was
estimated to be up 1.5e21 FLOPS[1], so the entire planet, elephants, mountains
and all, produces just 0.00025 FLOPS/kg.. It seems like it might be a little
while before the Earth has a higher computing power to weight ratio than this
mainframe did, but probably not too much longer. It is just a piddly 16
doublings after all.

[1][https://aiimpacts.org/global-computing-
capacity/](https://aiimpacts.org/global-computing-capacity/)

~~~
jacquesm
> FLOPS/kg seems like a fun stat that we should probably calculate more often.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium)

~~~
joezydeco
Trying to do a back-of-a-napkin calculation on a Haswell core (~ 500 GFLOPS),
but what is the weight of a 1000-pin BGA? Maybe 20 grams? That would put it at
2.5e+13 FLOPS/Kg

~~~
jacquesm
The vast bulk of that 20 grams is packaging, the die is probably less than 1
gram.

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zerr
I wonder what old techies think/thought about being forced to wear suits/ties.

~~~
mikestew
I’ll take a suit and tie that I can remove as soon as I get behind the closed
door of my private office over a kegerator, shorts, and an open office
hellscape. A piece of cloth around your neck wasn’t the only thing the old
days had to offer.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I used to keep a suit and a spare shirt and tie in the office when I worked
for a bit Uk company not that long ago.

~~~
ThePadawan
I worked for a company that had a pile of laundered white shirts and blouses
lying around solely for picture day.

~~~
mikestew
Precisely. I used to work at a “have to wear a tie” place. Guess how often
that tie came out of my messenger bag. “Hey, that big client is coming
today...”

Looking at old pictures is not a reliable way to suss the day-to-day of “the
old days”, any more than looking at your Facebook pictures indicates how much
you drink/eat/rock climb.

