Chapter 2

Question 1

First device to be called a supercomputer and its year

Answer 1

Cray 1 , 1976

Question 2

First electronic product by IBM and it’s year? Also name its successor along with the year

Answer 2

701, 1952
704, 1954

Question 3

What was the internal nickname for “IBM 701” ?

Answer 3

Defence Calculator

Question 4

Some important features about the IBM 701

Answer 4

1. First electronic product by IBM
2. Could be rented for $15000
3. Tape driver was more efficient and used an ingenious vacuum-column system
4. Faster memory reads because it read all bits of word at once

Question 5

Give some applications of the “Defence Calculator” `

Answer 5

Weapons Design, Trajectory prediction, Elections, Payroll, Financial analysis, cryptanalysis, logistics for the military

Question 6

What were the changes incorporated in the IBM 704 (1954)?

Answer 6

1. No more Williams tube -> Core memory (non volatile) meaning data stored even without power and multiple plains allowed simultaneous writing and reading of bits
2. Support for floating point arithmetic
3. Three point registers to simply programming
4. Interrupts(instead of checking for input and output repeatedly) were also integrated inspired form Univac 1103 (NASA). Later called “SPOOLing”.

Question 7

Name the founders of ERA ,its full form and year it was founded. Also what is it famous for?

Answer 7

Howard Engstrom & William Norris

Engineering Research Associates (1946)

Famous for the drum memory

Question 8

What was Task 13?

Answer 8

A Task assigned to the ERA to build a programmable electronic computer around the drum memory, code named “Atlas”.

Question 9

An example of a drum based computer

Answer 9

G-15, designed by Harry Huskey and built by Bendix (1956).

Question 10

Who wrote the first compiler? Give it’s two names. Give also the names of its successors and their year

Answer 10

Grace Hopper
Two names: Automatic programming and A0 (1952)
A1 and A2 in 1953

Question 11

Who wrote Fortran?

Answer 11

John Backus, released by IBM for 704 in early 1957

Question 12

What was SHARE and how was IBM involved with it?

Answer 12

A formal user group of IBM 704, which developed an impressive library of routines that each user could use to:
- Share code or documents
- Report bugs

IBM provided administrative and programming support to SHARE.

Question 13

When was FORTRAN Monitoring System released and what did it do?

Answer 13

1959 by SHARE and it loaded the monitor triggered code to load the next program without waiting for human operator to react.

Question 14

Name the first piece of software to be called an “Operating System” and which device was it built for? Did it have any other name? What were some of it’s features?

Answer 14

SOS (SHARE Operating System) or Share 709 project, 1956.
Features:
- Batch control
- powerful assembler
- output buffering

Question 15

What was the issue with SOS 1956?

Answer 15

Slow and used Assembly. People wanted FORTRAN now. Then SHARE developed IBSYS to run FORTRAN (later became IBM’s Job Control Language)

Question 16

A Fortran compiler developed by the University of Waterloo, its year and was useful for what?

Answer 16

Watfor , 1965
Useful for students to debug and increase execution speed.

Question 17

What was the Eispack project?

Answer 17

Project for calculation of matrix eigenvalues , release by Argonne National Laboratory in 1973. Its sequel was “Linpack for Linear algebra”.

Question 18

What was BLAS?

Answer 18

Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms to have machine specific code which would allow routines to run effectively on different architectures.

Question 19

When and where was Algol introduced? What structure did it use and where was that structure later used?

Answer 19

1958 in Zurich at a gathering for computer scientists. Improved version launched in 1960. It introduced block structure later used in C, Java, Pascal. It also supported recursion.

Question 20

What is the full form and use of BNF?

Answer 20

Backus Normal Form, used to describe the grammar of computer language

Question 21

What was Dijktra’s role in Algol?

Answer 21

He generalised the stack data structure into a fundamental feature of computer hardware and software and was also one of the people to build the compiler for Algol 60.

Question 22

Transistors were developed by? What were its features?

Answer 22

Bell Laboratories. It was smaller, faster, more efficient , initially more expensive.

Question 23

_____ was pioneered by Philco a company in Philadelphia, performed well and could be made in quantity.

Answer 23

Surface barrier transistor

Question 24

Which devices mark the beginning of the transistor era?

Answer 24

SOLO: first transistorised computer to operate in US
Commercial version was Transact S-1000 then S-2000 in 1958.
Small computer by Univac: Solid State 80

Question 25

About IBM 7094

Answer 25

1. Connected 1401 computers
2. Used tape
3. Well suited for administrative tasks
4. Rent was $30000

Question 26

When was the Ames Research Centre found and what was it known for?

Answer 26

1940, known for high speed aerodynamics research. In 1963 they upgraded to IBM 7094 which was the heart of the Direct Couple System.

Question 27

What was Stretch?

Answer 27

First IBM computer to support multi-programming. Announced in 1960, publicly as 7030 was said to deliver 60% more than IBM 704, but only gave 30%, so its prices were halved. It was not a success. Used in HARVEST (NSA), nuclear labs). Created a new market for what would be called “supercomputers”.

Question 28

What did Ferranti make?

Answer 28

He pioneered virtual memory with Atlas developed at the Manchester university and released into operation in 1962. Was one of the fastest and most influential computers of the time.

Question 29

What was CDC ?

Answer 29

Control Data was formed by former members of ERA, and their CD 6600 (could not handle own input/output ) replaced the Stretch.
Was 3x faster
Solved overheating with cooling pipes

Their first model the 1604 was delivered to US navy in 1960.

Question 30

About Seymore Cray

Answer 30

• Left CDC, founded Cray Research in 1972. Built Cray 1.
• Incorporated vector processing capability
• Data could be shuffled between data registers quickly
• Was in assembly
  Fastest computer in world till 1982, replaced by Cray X-MP (Multiple processors)