IAS computer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The IAS computer (also called IAS computer , Princeton machine , MANIAC-0 ) was an early universal computer that was designed and built from 1945 at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton (New Jersey) , New Jersey , It went into operation in 1952 and was shut down in 1958. Today it is in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC

history

The construction of the IAS computer went back to an initiative by John von Neumann , who was based on Alan Turing's concept of a universal computer from 1936.

Von Neumann was inspired by the ENIAC , which Eckert and Mauchly built at the University of Pennsylvania from 1942 . In 1945 von Neumann described the later so-called Von Neumann architecture in the discussion paper "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" , which he proposed for the ENIAC successor EDVAC . Although von Neumann is named as the sole author, EDVAC was an idea by Eckert and Mauchly, which was finally realized at the University of Pennsylvania. Eckert and Mauchly founded their company Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1946 , where they built the BINAC and later the UNIVAC .

Von Neumann began to promote the construction of his own computer at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), where he was a permanent member. In 1945 he managed to raise the funds needed to start the project. MANIAC was chosen as the name of the machine to be built: Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer. To distinguish it from the later MANIAC I of the Los Alamos National Laboratory , the term MANIAC-0 is sometimes used.

A computer team has been put together. Julian Bigelow was appointed chief engineer , hired in May 1946. Other team members included Hewitt Crane , Herman Goldstine , Gerald Estrin , Arthur Burks and Willis H. Ware .

A separate building was built for the computer project and the employees received their own residential buildings. In mid-1946 the working document "Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument" was published, which described the logical architecture of the computer. Von Neumann advocated making the technical data of the project public. As a result, there were numerous developments that were based on the principles of the IAS project (see below).

In the summer of 1951 the IAS computer had its first practical test: thermonuclear calculations ran for 60 days; they were part of the development of the hydrogen bomb , the first of which - Ivy Mike - was detonated in 1952. The computer was fully operational from June 10, 1952.

The IAS computer was used for various projects, including - in addition to military calculations - weather forecasts , some with the aim of influencing the weather , Monte Carlo simulations and experiments to research symbiogenesis and evolution .

In October 1954 von Neumann was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission . He was diagnosed with cancer in mid-1955, from which he died in early 1957. With that the IAS computer had lost its driving force.

On July 1, 1957, Princeton University took over the computer and tried unsuccessfully to integrate it into research operations. On July 15, 1958, the IAS computer was switched off. After dismantling the peripheral devices and the cooling system, the core of the computer was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 1962 .

Technical details

The IAS computer was a binary computer with 40 bit word length , in which a word could contain two 20-bit instructions. The main memory consisted of 1024 words, corresponding to 5.1 kilobytes. Negative numbers were shown in two's complement . The calculator had two registers : "Accumulator" (AC) and "Multiplier / Quotient" (MQ).

The memory was originally supposed to be realized with around 2,300 Selectron electron tubes from RCA . Delivery problems eventually led to the use of less reliable Williams tubes .

The IAS computer was asynchronous in the sense that there was no central timing of the commands; an instruction was started as soon as the previous one was completely executed. An addition took 62 microseconds, a multiplication 713 microseconds.

The IAS computer was not the first implementation of the Von Neumann architecture; this was the 1948 Small-Scale Experimental Machine at the University of Manchester in England .

Von Neumann showed how the combination of commands and data in memory could be used to program loops by changing commands while the program was running. However, this mixed use of the storage facility resulted in the so-called Von Neumann bottleneck .

Derivatives of the IAS computer

Technical descriptions of the IAS computer became common property. This led to numerous projects in which computers based on the IAS computer were built. Some examples:

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral.
  2. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. P. 15.
  3. ^ Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Decision Problem . Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Volume 42. Submitted in 1936, published in 1937.
  4. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 5. P. 101 ff.
  5. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 5. P. 101 ff.
  6. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 7. P. 146 ff.
  7. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 8. P. 194 ff.
  8. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 11. P. 293 ff.
  9. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 9. P. 227 ff.
  10. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 10. P. 256 ff.
  11. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 12. P. 326 ff.
  12. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 14. P. 388 ff.
  13. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 18. P. 459 ff.
  14. ↑ George Dyson: Turing's Cathedral. Chapter 8. P. 194 ff.