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#ILLIAC IV
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For the bulk of the past decade, the computer manufacturer* has maintained the "party line" that their successive models of high-end machines possessed all the performance that would be required for the foreseeable future. (This "party line" alternated with abortive attempts to, in fact, build high performance, compatible extensions of the product line which turned out to be neither high performance nor compatible.)
This is how the article begins. Keep in mind that the author is the guy who was in charge of building the ILLIAC IV project.
#HPC #coprocessor #ILLIAC #ILLIACIV #supercomputer #MIMD #SIMD
Description This is a color image of three men working in front of the ILLIAC IV supercomputer. The man on the left is standing and typing into a console attached to the ILLIAC Control Unit. The other two men are kneeling and testing one of the boards of the ILLIAC on a test machine. Engineer Jay Patton is at the oscillosope. ILLIAC IV had sixty-four processors, each with its own memory, each operating simultaneously on separate parts of a single problem. Designed at the University of Illinois and built by Burroughs, the one-of-a-kind ILLIAC IV took six years to complete at a cost of $40 million. It was installed at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calfornia. It was the fastest machine then in use and ahead of its time but was often plagued by technical problems and could be difficult to program. Source/credit : https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102651994
Mel Pirtle, the man responsible for getting the system on the air, said it was then up and running only about 8 hours a day, and that the longest job so far was a 10-minute program. Pirtle did add that test programs of "many hours" had been run.
(Oct. 1973)
#ILLIAC #HPC #retrocomputer #uptime
Man on the left woman on the right, both touching a "keyset" with one finger. Above and between them the schematic descprition of the plato system (2 tv displays, 2storage devices, 1 switch, 1 slide selector, 1 central computer).
The delicate drawing describing the PLATO II automatic teaching system.
[ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ]
[ DIGITAL COMPUTER NEWSLETTER 1961-1962 ]
#retrocomputing #ILLIAC #teaching #students #CS #computer #interactivity #vintage
