Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2.3 First Soviet series-produced mainframe “Strela”
digital computer EDVAC. They suggested to store programs directly in the com-
puter's random access memory, thus eliminating the main drawback of ENIAC—
configuration using physical switches and plugs. At this time the world-renowned
mathematician John von Neumann, member of the Manhattan project to develop
the atomic bomb, joined the team. He immediately appreciated the perspectives of
the new technology and took active part in creating EDVAC. The part of the report
on the machine he wrote contained a general description of EDVAC and the
fundamental principles of its design. In spite of the fact that a number of engineers
were involved in the development of these principles, they later were called
“von Neumann principles” (von Neumann paradigm). In any case, the establish-
ment of these principles was a revolutionary event in computer technology that
determined its further development.
Without going into detail of the history of the development of digital von
Neumann computers, the most significant milestones are as follows.
In 1953 IBM began the production of a general-purpose computer. The series-
produced IBM-701 had a random access memory with the capacity of 2,000 words
of 36 bits each and was capable of ~10,000 operations per second.
Just 6 years later IBM-7030 installed at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
reached one million operations per second. Its random access memory capacity was
256,000 64-bit words.
The pace of progress in computer technology over the second half of the
last century is illustrated by the characteristics of one of the most powerful super-
computers of our time, Top-500 Earth Simulator. It consists of 640 modules,
each containing 8 processors. The system has 10 terabytes of RAM and is theoreti-
cally capable of 40 teraflops (Flop stands for the number of floating-point operations
per second).
In the Soviet Union the first electronic computer was created in 1952 under the
supervision of academician S. A. Lebedev. His first full-fledged computer, BESM,
could perform 8,000 operations per second and store 1,000 39-bit words.
The first series-produced mainframe “Strela” was built in 1953 under the
supervision of Yu. Ya. Bazilevsky (Fig.
2.3
). Its speed was 2,000 operations per
second, and its random access memory was based on cathode-ray storage tubes
