[COFF] The Muffer

[COFF] The Muffer

[cym224]

In 1966, Engineers at IBM invented a method of speeding up execution
without adding a lot of very expensive memory.  They called their
invention the muffer.  The name did not catch on so they picked another
name and submitted an article to the IBM System J.  The editor noted
that their second name was heavily overused and suggested a third name,
which the engineers accepted.  The third name was cache.
(Muffer was short for memory buffer.)

This from "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems", MIT Press.  I found this
an amusing tidbit of history -- hopefully so may others.

N.

[COFF] The Muffer

[pi]

nemo nusquam, on 2020-07-01 17:42,  wrote:
>  The editor noted that their second name was heavily overused
>  and suggested a third name, which the engineers accepted. 

Neat piece of trivia, but I'm broken in some way where upon
reading this, my brain demands I drop everything until I learn
what that second discarded name was. If, like me, your curiosity
was piqued: it was "high-speed buffer." 

Here's the full quote from page 417 of IBM's 360 and Early 370
Systems By Emerson W. Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer:

  The local store, which had a standard capacity of 16 kilobytes,
  figured heavily in three Model 85 papers submitted to the /IBM
  Systems Journal/. Because /muffer/, Gibson's suggested term,
  had not taken root, the submitted papers designated the local
  store as a high-speed buffer, a name by then firmly embedded in
  instruction manuals for the Model 85. The papers were nearly
  ready for publication when the /Journal's/ editor contended
  that the name was too shopworn to do justice to innovation. His
  suggestion, /cache/, substituted with the consent of the
  authors, was soon adopted throughout the industry.

best,
pi
-- 
                   _
                  / \
                A*   \^   -
             ,./   _.`\\ / \
            / ,--.S    \/   \
           /  `"~,_     \    \
     __o           ?
   _ \<,_         /:\
--(_)/-(_)----.../ | \
--------------.......J
Paul Ivanov
https://pirsquared.org | GPG/PGP key id: 0x0F3E28F7