[Info-vax] TRON and Foonly [was Re: The attempts to keep Linux on Itanium (attempt number 0x7fff_ffff)]

[Single Stage to Orbit]

On Mon, 2023-11-27 at 15:35 -0500, Rich Alderson wrote:
> > BTW, I found out recently, that they used the Super Foonly F1 (a
> > supercharged PDP-10 no less) to render the CGI for the film TRON!
> 
> Supercharged with respect to a 1967 PDP-10 (KA-10 CPU) or 1971
> DECsystem-10 (KI-10 CPU).  The F1 is approximately the same
> processing power as a 1974 KL-10 CPU (DECsystem-1080, DECSYSTEM-
> 2040).
> 
> The Systems Concepts SC-40 was the only truly supercharged PDP-10,
> with a floating point accelerator that gave roughly 10x performance
> for FP operations. For everything else, the SC boxes and the XKL
> Toad-1 and TOAD-2 systems provide 2x to 2.5x processing power over
> the KL-10.

And all that would be left in the dust by a tiny little RP2040. For £5
UKP. 
-- 
Tactical Nuclear Kittens