Near-Perfect Efficiency

The Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, which provides high-speed computer services for faculty and students at Dartmouth and some 50 other colleges and high schools, is operating at close to 100% efficiency.

Prof. Thomas E. Kurtz, Director of the Kiewit Computation Center which marked its fifth anniversary on December 2, reports that the DTSS reached 99.5%, highest for the year, in December, when students were finishing up fall research projects. During October, which he termed a typical operating month, the system was available and functioning 98.4% of the time.

Although Professor Kurtz considers 100% efficiency a realistic goal, he notes that system failures beyond man's immediate control can reduce efficien- cy. The Center classifies failures as hardware (equipment), software (programs), environmental, and human. Power failures can cause the greatest delays in getting the system back into operation, he reports. About 40% of total time lost in October was caused by power outages outside the Center.

One of the recent power failures at the Center, which could be neither controlled nor anticipated, occurred when a mathematically unsophisticated squirrel shorted one of the main power lines to the Center.