architecting

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated   Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:12:16 -0500,   Jesse Sheidlower
<jester at PANIX.COM> writes

>  On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 12:51:41PM -0500, Wendalyn Nichols wrote:
>  > Anyone else run across this verb? Here's a quote from the description of
a
>  > job posted by an investment firm:
>  >
>  > "Members of the Strategic Growth department are responsible for
>  > architecting and executing strategies to identify and recruit world-class
>  > talent in a variety of both technical and non-technical fields..."
>
>  As others have pointed out, this is originally in the software
>  industry as a fancy synonym for 'design'; the OED draft entry
>  has examples to the mid-1970s. We now have increasing number of
>  examples in a broader scope, but still in the general sense
>  'to design' or 'to plan'.

Amdahl, G. M., Blaauw, G. A., and Brooks, F. P. "Architecture of the IBM
System/360," _IBM Journal of Research and Development_, 8, No. 2, 87-101 (April
1964)

While the authors are listed alphabetically, I have no doubt that Gene Amdahl
was the lead author.  Amdahl is well-known in the computer business as THE
designer of the System/360 family.  Later he left IBM and founded his own
company, also called "Amdahl", to build computers using the 360 "architecture" in
competition with IBM.

It could be that this article introduced the noun "architecture" to mean
"design of a computer".  IBM introduced all sorts of new jargon with the
System/360, e.g. what everybody had called a "file" was now to be known as a "data set"
(which in this case led to some confusion, since "data set" is a now-obsolete
term for what we now call a "modem").    IBM also called the System/360 "a
third-generation system", a term which has caught on, even though the 360 was
NOT the first third-generation system.  (What constitutes a third-generation
system is debatable.  My definition is a computer designed around
base-displacement addressing, protected memory, and interrupts, by which definition Britain's
Ferranti Atlas of 1960 was the first.)

Furthermore, the System/360, if not the first third-generation system,
definitely introduced a number of new ideas into computer design.  For one thing, it
was the first computer sold as a "family", that is, different models at
different prices to cover every niche from small to large.  All previous computers
had been introduced as single models wtih single prices and single performance
levels.  Whereas one "designed" a pre-System/360 computer, one might claim
that putting together an entire FAMILY transcended mere design and should be
considered "architecture".

Yes, I am aware that the above citation is for "architecture" as a noun.  I
have no citations for the word as a verb.

The bibliography I got this citation from (my grad school textbook on the
subject, Caxton C. Foster and Thea Iberall, _Computer Architecture, Third
Edition_ New York: Van Nostrand, 1985, ISBN 0-442-27219-7) gives no other citation
for "architecture" before 1970 and they start becoming numerous about 1978. (I
will supply these on request) So Amdahl et al's apparent nelogism might not
have caught on for a while.

Note to Jesse: you said "in the software industry".  The 1964 Amdahl cite was
actually "in the hardware industry".

       - James A. Landau