Cs 185C: The History of Computing September 21 Class Meeting Department of Computer Science San Jose State University Fall 2011 Instructor: Ron Mak

CS 185C: The History of Computing September 21 Class Meeting

• Department of Computer Science San Jose State University Fall 2011 Instructor: Ron Mak

• www.cs.sjsu.edu/~mak

Konrad Zuse, 1910-1995

• Built the Z1, 1935-1938

• world’s first program-controlled computer
• 1936 patent application foreshadows the von Neumann architecture

• 1941: completes Z3

• world’s first fully functional programmable computer
• fortunately for WW II allies, not fully supported by Hitler

• 1945: describes Plankalkül

• world’s first high-level programming language
• “formal system for planning”

Plankalkül

German Enigma Machines

• Enigma machines

• Used by the Germans to encrypt messages during WW II

British Colossus Machines

• Colossus machines

• Built by the British to decrypt Enigma messages
• Bletchley Park
• Vacuum tubes
• Paper tape
• 1941: Mark 1
• 1944: Mark 2
• Kept a secret for many years after the war.
• ordered destroyed by Winston Churchill after the war

Moore School of Electrical Engineering

• University of Pennsylvania

• Birthplace of the modern computer industry

• ENIAC
• Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
• First general-purpose Turing-complete digital electronic computer
• built 1943-1946
• not a stored program computer
• EDVAC

Moore School Lectures

• First computer course (“Moore School Lectures”)

• July 8 – August 30, 1946
• Instructors included J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly
• 28 students
• each a veteran mathematician or engineer
• several returned home to design their own computers

Moore School Lectures

• 1 George Stibitz Introduction to the Course on Electronic Digital Computers

• 2 Irven Travis The History of Computing Devices

• 3 J.W. Mauchly Digital and Analogy Computing Machines

• 4 D.H. Lehmer Computing Machines for Pure Mathematics

• 5 D.R. Hartree Some General Considerations in the Solutions of Problems in Applied Mathematics

• 6 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods I

• 7 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods II

• 8 A.W. Burks Digital Machine Functions

• 9 J.W. Mauchly The Use of Function Tables with Computing Machines

• 10 J.P. Eckert A Preview of a Digital Computing Machine

• 11 C.B. Sheppard Elements of a Complete Computing System

• 12 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods III

• 13 H.H. Aiken The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator

• 14 H.H. Aiken Electro-Mechanical Tables of the Elementary Functions

• 15 J.P. Eckert Types of Circuit -- General

• 16 T.K. Sharpless Switching and Coupling Circuits

Moore School Lectures

• 17 A.W. Burks Numerical Mathematical Methods IV

• 18 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods V

• 19 Hans Rademacher On the Accumulation of Errors in Numerical Integration on the

• ENIAC

• 20 J.P. Eckert Reliability of Parts

• 21 C.B. Sheppard Memory Devices

• 22 J.W. Mauchly Sorting and Collating

• 23 J.P. Eckert C.B. Sheppard Adders

• 24 J.P. Eckert Multipliers

• 25 J.W. Mauchly Conversions between Binary and Decimal Number Systems

• 26 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods VI

• 27 Chuan Chu Magnetic Recording

• 28 J.P. Eckert Tapetypers and Printing Mechanisms

• 29 J.H. Curtiss A Review of Government Requirements and Activities in the Field of Automatic Digital Computing Machinery

• 30 H.H. Goldstine Numerical Mathematical Methods VII

• 31 A.W. Burks Numerical Mathematical Methods VIII

• 32 Perry Crawford Application of Digital Computation Involving Continuous Input and Output Variables

Moore School Lectures

• 33 J.P. Eckert Continuous Variable Input and Output Devices

• 34 S.B. Williams Reliability and Checking in Digital Computing Systems

• 35 J.P. Eckert Reliability and Checking

• 36 C.B. Sheppard Code and Control -- I

• 37 J.W.Mauchly Code and Control -- II Machine Design and Instruction Codes

• 38 C.B. Sheppard Code and Control -- III

• 39 C.N. Mooers Code and Control -- IV Examples of a Three-Address Code and the Use of 'Stop Order Tags'

• 40 J. von Neumann New Problems and Approaches

• 41 J.P. Eckert Electrical Delay Lines

• 42 J.P. Eckert A Parallel-Type EDVAC

• 43 Jan Rajchman The Selectron

• 44 C.N. Mooers Discussion of Ideas for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory Computing Machine

• 45 J.P. Eckert A Parallel Channel Computing Machine

• 46 C.B. Sheppard A Four-Channel Coded-Decimal Electrostatic Machine

• 47 T.K. Sharpless Description of Serial Acoustic Binary EDVAC

• 48 J.W.Mauchly Accumulation of Errors in Numerical Methods

John von Neumann, 1903-1957

• Hungarian-American mathematician

• set theory
• quantum mechanics
• economics
• game theory
• cellular automata
• computer science
• numerical analysis
• statistics
• nuclear physics
• etc.

Von Neumann Architecture

• Described in “The First Draft Report on the EDVAC” by von Neumann, June 30, 1945

• http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/CS185C/EDVAC.pdf

• Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

• Designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert starting in August 1944 at the Moore School
• von Neumann was a consultant to the project

• Controversies

• Mauchly and Eckert claimed that von Neumann merely wrote up notes of their design meetings
• von Neumann got all the credit for the architecture
• von Neumann’s paper prevented EDVAC from being patented

Von Neumann Architecture

Von Neumann Architecture

• Digital computer with separate components

• central arithmetic
• central control
• memory that stored both data and instructions
• allows self-modifying code
• data and instructions share a common bus
• data fetch and instruction fetch cannot be simultaneous
• external storage
• I/O devices

Brief History of Computer Architecture

• Word length

• Mercury delay line memory
• fetch data one bit at a time
• Core memory
• fetch data by sets of bits (i.e., words)
• Scientific calculations
• 7 to 12 decimal digits
• longer word lengths meant more precise calculations, but greater cost and complexity and less performance
• Business calculations
• shorter word length = fewer digits
• variable-length words

Brief History of Computer Architecture

• Machine registers

• A small number of memory locations within the CPU
• fast arithmetic and logical operations
• Early machine had a single “accumulator”
• Later machines had more registers
• specific purpose registers
• integer
• floating point
• address
• index
• general purpose registers
• Index registers reduced the need for self-modifying code

Brief History of Computer Architecture

• Number of addresses in each instruction

• Single address instructions
• specify the address of the memory location from which to load the contents into the accumulator
• specify the address of the memory location to which to store the contents from the accumulator
• Two address instructions
• specify the addresses of both operands of the instruction
• Three address instructions
• specify the target address for the result
• Zero address instructions
• stack machine

Brief History of Computer Architecture

• Size of an address in an instruction

• 12 bits can address 212 = 4096 bytes of memory
• 24 bits can address 224 = 16 MB of memory
• For a small machine with under 16 MB of memory, a long address wastes instruction bits
• Solution:
• Use base registers
• Store an address in a “base” address register
• Each instruction has a 12-bit address
• Effective address = base register + instruction address

UNIVAC

• Universal Automatic Computer

• First U.S. commercial computer
• First delivered to the census bureau, 1951
• Used by CBS News to correctly predict the 1952 presidential election
• 46 systems delivered
• last one used until 1970
• 5200 vacuum tubes
• Mercury delay line memory
• 1000 12-character words
• 1905 operations/second

IBM 650

• World’s first mass-produced computer

• Over 2000 systems shipped, 1954-1962

• Drum memory

• 2000 signed 10-digit words
• 12,500 rpm, 2.5 ms average access time

IBM 650

IBM 7090

• “Classic” mainframe computer, 1958-1964

• Transistorized version of the vacuum tube based IBM 709 computer, 1957-1960

• Upgraded to IBM 7094

• 4 index registers

• 32K words core memory

• 36-bit words

• 50-100 K FLOPS

• as fast as late 1980s PC

• Lots of blinking lights

IBM 1401

• Small mainframe computer, 1959

• Most popular computer during the early 1960s

• transistor-based
• variable-length words
• up to 16,000 characters of main memory

IBM 360

• A family of upward-compatible computers

• First model released in 1964
• Both scientific and commercial use
• IBM “bet the company” on this family of computers
• By 1970, models offered a 200:1 performance range
• 32-bit words
• Up to 16 MB of main memory

• Architecture still used today

• 360 programs can run on today’s IBM z-Series computers
• Subject of Dan Greiner’s talk, Wednesday Nov. 30

Microprogramming

• Implement the control section of a digital computer as a little stored program computer of its own.

• First proposed by Maurice Wilkes in 1951

• Key to the success of the IBM 360

• Developers could implement the common instruction set and still take advantage of each family member’s hardware design.
• Emulate the instruction set of earlier machines
• Not “simulate” or “imitate”

• Software is more permanent and harder to modify than hardware.

Minicomputers

• Class of computer systems between the large expensive mainframe systems and the small inexpensive personal computer systems.

• Cheap enough to be purchased by individual departments, such as a school or a scientific laboratory.
• Popular during the 1960s and 1970s
• First was Control Data CDC 160
• designed by Seymour Cray in 1960

• Architectural features

• shorter word length
• direct memory access

Microprocessors

• 1971: Intel 4004

• first complete CPU on a chip
• worked with 4 bits at a time
• first commercially available microprocessor
• developed for a Japanese calculator company

• 1972: Intel 8008

• 1974: Intel 8080

• 8-bit chip
• $360 each
• instruction set and memory addressing capabilities approached those of the minicomputers of the day

CISC vs. RISC

• CISC: Complex Instruction Set Computer

• Core memory access relatively slow
• Specify in great detail what to do with a piece of data before fetching it from memory
• Reduce the “semantic gap” between high-level languages and low-level machine instructions
• compilers have less work to do

• RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computer

• Semiconductor memory as fast as the CPU
• frequent memory loads and stores no longer a problem
• Simpler instructions can run faster
• 1987: Sun Microsystems introduces its SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) workstation
• 1991: Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance releases the PowerPC (Performance Optimization with Enhanced RISC)