IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems Hardcover - 1991

From the publisher

No new product offering has had greater impact on the computer industrythan the IBM System/360. IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems describes the creation ofthis remarkable system and the developments it spawned, including its successor, System/370. The authors tell how System/360's widely-copied architecture came intobeing and how IBM failed in an effort to replace it ten years later with a bolddevelopment effort called FS, the Future System. Along the way they detail thedevelopment of many computer innovations still in use, among them semiconductormemories, the cache, floppy disks, and Winchester disk files. They conclude bylooking at issues involved in managing research and development and striving forproduct leadership.While numerous anecdotal and fragmentary accounts of System/360and System/370 development exist, this is the first comprehensive account, a resultof research into IBM records, published reports, and interviews with over a hundredparticipants. Covering the period from about 1960 to 1975, it highlights suchimportant topics as the gamble on hybrid circuits, conception and achievement of aunified product line, memory and storage developments, software support, uniqueproblems at the high end of the line, monolithic integrated circuit developments, and the trend toward terminal-oriented systems.System/360 was developed during thetransition from discrete transistors to integrated circuits at the crucial time whenthe major source of IBM's revenue was changed from punched-card equipment toelectronic computer systems. As the authors point out, the key to the system'ssuccess was compatibility among its many models. So important was this to customersthat System/370 and its successors have remained compatible with System/360. Manycompanies in fact chose to develop and market their own 360-370 compatible systems.System/360 also spawned an entire industry dedicated to making plug-compatibleproducts for attachment to it.The authors, all affiliated with IBM Research, arecoauthors of IBM's Early Computers, a critically acclaimed technical historycovering the period before 1960.