🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <AGLEW.89Sep11230245@chant.urbana.mcd.mot.com> aglew@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Andy-Krazy-Glew) writes:
>>The major microprocessors (that I know of) available in the market
>>deal with parity only at the bus interface.  Are there large systems
>>(mainframes, supercomputers) that perform additional parity checks
>>internally and under what conditions?
>
>While working for a minicomputer company, I heard that the major
>difference between minicomputers and microcomputers was that minis did
>error detection (and occasionally correction) on major functional data
>paths, not just the bus, and micros didn't.  I believe that many
>minis have internal parity checks - in particular Gould PN and NPs.
>See the appropriate technical manuals.
>

The split that I remember was between mainframes and minicomputers
where the mainframes had oodles of error checking and the minis
had ECC on the memory, parity on the main bus, and not much more.

I was involved in one project where the end product was an IBM
370 clone and the project personnel was about 50/50 mainframe/
minicomputer people. The discussions about internal error
checking were very spirited (read screaming, shrieking
fights lacking only knives and guns).

The minicomputer people won and we did it mini style (just
for the record, I was in the losing camp) with minimal
error detection.