JOSS : 20,000 Hours at the Console--A Statistical Summary.

Results of the first year of JOSS operation on the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-6. The gathering of data for revenue accounting and for producing performance measures of the JOSS system and its users is a major function of the monitor, the system's supervisory unit. As generated by the instrumenting programs, statistics on usage indicate that over 700 individuals make use of JOSS service. Every month 400 different users generate over 200 sessions each day. Typical user sessions last 45 minutes and average 4 minutes of computing time, although 50 percent last less than 7 seconds. During an average session, 15,000 JOSS statements are executed, and 68,000 arithmetic operations are performed. JOSS user requests are substantially different from those made on other time-shared systems: there are a relatively large number of requests for short amounts of computing and a relatively small number for a large amount of computing. The amount of computing, however, is by no means trivial, as seen from the number of statements and arithmetic operations performed. 45 pp. Refs. Bibliog.