Discussion of large systems

[Richard]

In article <4548186F.30908 at mdrconsult.com>,
    Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com>  writes:

> Richard wrote:
> > In article <45479038.22326.4735378C at cclist.sydex.com>,
> >     "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>  writes:
> > 
> >> After alll, it was the tape drives that defined a computer for 
> >> Hollywood for many years...
> > 
> > So far noone has responded to my earlier query in the affirmative:
> > 
> >     Does anyone have enough tape drives that they can do the
> >     multi-drive merge/sort tape algorithms described in Knuth's
> >     Art of Computer Programming?
> 
>    How many would that be?

I believe the example uses 6, but as mentioned the algorithm is
generalized to an arbitrary number of tape drives.  Personally I think
to do it Hollywood style, you'd need at least 6 drives and it would be
even more impressive if you could get something like 12 drives all in
a row grinding away on it.
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
      <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>