Computers as big as houses... back to the 60's
- Instruction pre-fetching
- This term was used by IBM and referred to the IBM/360, which saved time by
anticipating the most likely next course of action - if the machine "guessed"
incorrectly, nothing was lost; but if right, a few nanoseconds were gained.
- Graceful degradation
- This was an ICL 4-70 concept. For a long time the manual said "Graceful
degradation is not yet implemented." When it finally came, it enabled the
machine to do a few useful things if the mains supply was suddenly cut - during
the dying cycles of power the central processing unit managed to store
some vital checkpoints in assorted registers. Hopefully when the power came
back on, you could pick up where you left off.
I have always tried to fashion my life according to these two simple concepts,
that of using idle time to prepare for the statistically-most-likely
outcome - until proved otherwise - and the art of maintaining elegance of
operation, even under pressure so great that it provokes a temporary collapse.