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Also known as | ERA 1103 |
---|---|
Developer | Engineering Research Associates |
Manufacturer | Remington Rand |
Release date | 1953 |
Memory | Total random-access memory of 1024 words of 36 bits each (36 Williams tubes with a capacity of 1024 bits each) |
Mass | 38,543 pounds (19.3 short tons; 17.5 t) |
Predecessor | UNIVAC 1101 |
Successor | UNIVAC 1103A |
The UNIVAC 1103 or ERA 1103, a successor to the UNIVAC 1101, [1] is a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in October 1953. It was the first computer for which Seymour Cray was credited with design work. [2]
Even before the completion of the Atlas (UNIVAC 1101), the Navy asked Engineering Research Associates to design a more powerful machine. This project became Task 29, and the computer was designated Atlas II.
In 1952, Engineering Research Associates asked the Armed Forces Security Agency (the predecessor of the NSA) for approval to sell the Atlas II commercially. Permission was given, on the condition that several specialized instructions would be removed. The commercial version then became the UNIVAC 1103. Because of security classification, Remington Rand management was unaware of this machine before this. The first commercially sold UNIVAC 1103 was sold to the aircraft manufacturer Convair, where Marvin Stein worked with it.[ citation needed ]
Remington Rand announced the UNIVAC 1103 in February 1953. The machine competed with the IBM 701 in the scientific computation market. In early 1954, a committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested that the two machines be compared for the purpose of using them for a Joint Numerical Weather Prediction project. Based on the trials, the two machines had comparable computational speed, with a slight advantage for IBM's machine, but the Univac 1103 was favored unanimously for its significantly faster input/output equipment. [3]
The successor machines are the UNIVAC 1103A or Univac Scientific, which improved upon the design by replacing the unreliable Williams tube memory with magnetic-core memory, adding hardware floating-point instructions, and perhaps the earliest occurrence of a hardware interrupt feature. [4] That was succeeeded by the UNIVAC 1105.
System Logic was done with around 3,900 tubes (mostly triodes) and 9,000 diodes, in total at least 12 distinct tube types were used in the design. [5] The system used electrostatic storage, consisting of 36 Williams tubes with a capacity of 1024 bits each, giving a total random-access memory of 1024 words of 36 bits each. Each of the 36 Williams tubes was five inches in diameter. A magnetic drum memory provided 16,384 words. Both the electrostatic and drum memories were directly addressable: addresses 0 through 01777 (Octal) were in electrostatic memory and 040000 through 077777 (Octal) were on the drum.
Fixed-point numbers had a 1-bit sign and a 35-bit value, with negative values represented in ones' complement format.[ citation needed ]
Instructions had a 6-bit operation code and two 15-bit operand addresses.[ citation needed ]
Programming systems for the machine included the RECO regional coding assembler by Remington-Rand, the RAWOOP one-pass assembler and SNAP floating point interpretive system authored by the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation of Los Angeles, the FLIP floating point arithmetic interpretive system by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft of San Diego, and the CHIP floating-point interpretive system by Wright Field in Ohio.
UNIVAC 1103/A weighed about 38,543 pounds (19.3 short tons; 17.5 t). [6]
The UNIVAC 1103A or Univac Scientific is an upgraded version introduced in March 1956. [7] [8] [1] [ page needed ]
Significant new features on the 1103A were its magnetic-core memory and the addition of interrupts to the processor. [9] The UNIVAC 1103A had up to 12,288 words of 36-bit magnetic core memory, in one to three banks of 4,096 words each.
Fixed-point numbers had a one-bit sign and a 35-bit value, with negative values represented in ones' complement format. Floating-point numbers had a one-bit sign, an eight-bit characteristic, and a 27-bit mantissa. Instructions had a six-bit operation code and two 15-bit operand addresses.
The 1103A was contemporary with, and a competitor to, the IBM 704, which also employed vacuum-tube logic, magnetic-core memory, and floating-point hardware.
A version of this machine was sold to the Lewis Research Center, NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in Cleveland, Ohio. It had the first magnetic core of 1096 words of 36 bits. The magnetic drum storage has a capacity of 16,384 words, and the clock speed is 500KHz. Input/output is teletype paper tape. When NACA became NASA in 1958, a series of improvements was begun to improve functionality and reliability. Over the next ten years, the machine was significantly upgraded by replacing the magnetic core with a commercial solid state 16,384 word magnetic core system. An 8 unit magnetic tape system, a floating point arithmetic unit, and an indirect addressing unit were designed and built in-house. All solid-state commercial electronics modules were interfaced to the vacuum tube electronics in the original machine.
The 1104 system is a 30-bit version of the 1103 built for Westinghouse Electric in 1957, for use on the BOMARC Missile Program. However, by the time the BOMARC was deployed in the 1960s, a more modern computer (a version of the AN/USQ-20, designated the G-40) had replaced the UNIVAC 1104. [10]
The UNIVAC 1105 is a follow-on computer to the UNIVAC 1103A introduced by Sperry Rand in September 1958. The main changes from the 1103 included a Buffered I/O system and an optional third memory cabinet extending core memory by an additional 4,096 words. [5]
BINAC is an early electronic computer that was designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, but chose to leave and start EMCC, the first computer company. BINAC was their first product, the first stored-program computer in the United States; BINAC is also sometimes claimed to be the world's first commercial digital computer even though it was limited in scope and never fully functional after delivery.
The UNIVAC I was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. Design work was started by their company, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), and was completed after the company had been acquired by Remington Rand. In the years before successor models of the UNIVAC I appeared, the machine was simply known as "the UNIVAC".
UNIVAC was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and successor organizations.
The JOHNNIAC was an early computer built by the RAND Corporation and based on the von Neumann architecture that had been pioneered on the IAS machine. It was named in honor of von Neumann, short for John von NeumannNumerical Integrator and Automatic Computer.
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory.
The ERA 1101, later renamed UNIVAC 1101, was a computer system designed and built by Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in the early 1950s and continued to be sold by the Remington Rand corporation after that company later purchased ERA. Its (initial) military model, the ERA Atlas, was the first stored-program computer that was moved from its site of manufacture and successfully installed at a distant site. Remington Rand used the 1101's architecture as the basis for a series of machines into the 1960s.
The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May 21, 1952. It was designed and developed by Jerrier Haddad and Nathaniel Rochester and was based on the IAS machine at Princeton.
The AN/USQ-20, or CP-642 or Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), was designed as a more reliable replacement for the Seymour Cray-designed AN/USQ-17 with the same instruction set. The first batch of 17 computers were delivered to the Navy starting in early 1961.
The UNIVAC 1100/2200 series is a series of compatible 36-bit computer systems, beginning with the UNIVAC 1107 in 1962, initially made by Sperry Rand. The series continues to be supported today by Unisys Corporation as the ClearPath Dorado Series. The solid-state 1107 model number was in the same sequence as the earlier vacuum-tube computers, but the early computers were not compatible with their solid-state successors.
The UNIVAC 1105 was a follow-on computer to the UNIVAC 1103A introduced by Sperry Rand in September 1958. The UNIVAC 1105 used 21 types of vacuum tubes, 11 types of diodes, 10 types of transistors, and three core types.
The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube logic and were made obsolete by the introduction of the transistorized 7000s. The 7000s, in turn, were eventually replaced with System/360, which was announced in 1964. However the 360/65, the first 360 powerful enough to replace 7000s, did not become available until November 1965. Early problems with OS/360 and the high cost of converting software kept many 7000s in service for years afterward.
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