Record High Load Average

[terryl at tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM]

brian at ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) writes:
> A few years ago our Vax-780 'sdcc3' set the netwide load average record
> high of 128 (and may still hold it for a single-processor Unix system).
>
> Yesterday we got our network connections unjammed and our mail gateway
> 'UCSD' set what I think may be the record for a Vax-750: 85.3.  And this
> is on a machine which has NO users, just sendmails.  Thank goodness
> we're getting some faster hardware in soon.

     OK, it's reminiscing time again. WAY BACK (that's way back, Sherman!!!),
in medevial times, back when Berkeley's EECS Cory machine was a lowly 11/70,
the load average was regularly in the low 50's!!! Pretty much impossible to
get anything done with that kind of load average (and sometimes even logging
in would time out, so one couldn't even log in if one wanted to....).

     I wonder how a load average of 50 on an 11/70 compares with a load
average of 128 on an 11/780.......