Prime Computer
Prime Computer , also spelled PR1ME , was a Natick , Massachusetts- based manufacturer of 32- bit super mini computers . Prime operated from 1972 to 1992.
The 32-bit computer systems from this provider were successful from the late 1970s, especially in the university sector and in technology with the introduction of CA technologies ( CAD , CAM , CAQ , FEM and related areas).
The Swiss PC manufacturer Prime Computer AG of the same name was founded in 2013 and has no connection with the former US company.
founding
The society was founded by the following people, some of whom were involved in the Multics project at MIT :
- Robert Baron (President)
- Sidney Halligan (Vice President Sales)
- James Campbell (Director Marketing)
- Joseph Cashen (Vice President Hardware Engineering)
- Robert Berkowitz (Vice President Manufacturing)
- William Poduska (Vice President Software Engineering)
- John Carter (Head of Human Resources / Director of Human Resources)
The company started with the motto Software First . This should mean that the design of the hardware must be preceded by the definition of the software so that it can run optimally on the hardware (e.g. microcode support for task switching , ready-list , VM address translation and cache ) .
Poduska left Prime in 1980 to start Apollo Computer . Ten years later he left Apollo and founded the supercomputer workstation company Stardent .
The German branch was founded in 1974. The first German Prime customer (the biophysical measuring device department of the MHH Hanover under the direction of Prof. Günter Maaß) had already decided shortly beforehand for the innovative P300 (first Prime Multi-User System), which was operated by a 2-man Team in Germany. However, the first "German" Prime machines were at Linotype in Frankfurt and ensured high quality printing there. The P200, a single-user system based on the Honeywell 316 that had previously been used at Linotype, was used. The customer here was Linotype, USA.
The operating system of the Prime computers, initially DOS or DOS / VM, later PRIMOS , is a derivative of Multics . In the original, this operating system was largely implemented in the Fortran programming language . The PL / I derivative PL / P and Modula-2 languages were subsequently used in the kernel. A certain number of new utilities in PRIMOS have been written in SP / L, which is similar to PL / P. In the first few years, the complete source code was supplied so that users not only understand the system better, but could also add their own add-ons.
The original products were initially replicas of the Honeywell mini-computers 316 and 516 from the 16 series . The Prime 400 was a successful minicomputer in its day (late 1970s), and the Prime 750 (1979) was a competitor to DEC's VAX 11/780 , one of the first 32-bit super minicomputers .
Prime was successful in the 1970s and 1980s and peaked in 1988 when it was 334th on the Fortune 500 list. Any export of prime computer types to the Eastern Bloc was prohibited according to the CoCom list. However, parts have occasionally been successfully smuggled.
In the late 1980s, Prime ran into problems as more and more customers migrated to Unix systems; Sun in particular proved to be a successful, inexpensive competitor. Additionally, it became increasingly difficult for Prime to keep up in the battle for sheer computing power. In contrast to DEC, they failed to build an LSI -based CPU, although a corresponding project was well advanced ("Prime on a chip").
Prime tried to develop in the direction of a CAD company, among other things when she bought the CAD provider Computervision for 300 million US dollars . This expensive purchase left the company vulnerable to hostile takeover. Bennett S. LeBow made a similar attempt with his Basic4 Corporation . To fend off the takeover, Prime had himself bought back into private ownership by the New York venture capitalist JH Whitney. Finally, computer development and production were discontinued and the Prime company was renamed ComputerVision.
Office automation systems
Prime bought the OAS application suite from Lincoln National, a large insurance company , in the late 1970s or early 1980s . It is unclear whether the system was a co-development of the insurance company with Prime. The system was one of the pioneering applications in this field, struggling for a long time, especially in Great Britain, to achieve a leading position, but ultimately failed.
OAS consisted of the following applications:
- Electronic mail, initially limited to a single, non-networked minicomputer, and only much later expanded into a synchronized, global system that was only proprietary, i.e. it worked between different PrimOS machines in the Prime network.
- Word processing , either on stupid (at least semigraphic- capable) terminals such as PT25, PT45 and PST100, or on the semi-intelligent PT65 terminal, which had to load its software from the central computer. It was a page-based text system. This workstation concept was very similar to Wang's machines , but the execution speed was much slower than Wang's because processing was carried out via RS-232 C serial interfaces , whereas the Wang machines had fast - but expensive - coaxial cable connections. The word processor was not of the highest quality, and the PT65 device often destroyed the text in the process.
When Prime recognized the withdrawal of customers from the download workstations, Prime made an arrangement with Convergent Technologies for their Unix-based AWS system, which Prime renamed Prime Producer 100 (started in mid-1983), and later for Convergent's modular NGEN system which was then called Prime Producer 200 and released in 1984. Each of these systems was far superior to the original Prime word processor, and they were document-centric.
Prime had a very active OAS user group in the UK, whose product development suggestions were taken up. The British pioneers included the London Docklands Development Corporation real estate development company and Oxford Brookes University .
Prime information
The database concept called Prime Information was also very similar in concept and design to the Pick environment, developed by Richard Pick, which allowed the rapid, 4GL- like development of your own applications using relational or quasi-relational database structures . Approx. In 1987 this system came into competition with Oracle , one version of which was ported to the Primes and also sold in Germany.
Prime Information Connection
Around 1984, Prime developed a system that got caught up in OAS and confused the market. Prime Information Connection combined word processing and the database programming model, thereby double offering competing office suites in a market that was dominated by Wang Laboratories in the US at the time .
Competitor
The company DEC was a larger (approx. Factor of 10) and ultimately more successful competitor of Prime . Above all, the VAX-VMS operating system was seen by the users in terms of convenience and ease of learning; the operating system PRIMOS from Prime was only a little behind.
Another early competitor to Prime was Data General . In later years various computer vendors emerged who concentrated on high-performance hardware development and based their software on the increasingly sophisticated Unix world. This also included the Nixdorf Computer company in the early 1980s .
Model development
The first well-selling 32-bit model from Prime was the P400 (2 CPU boards), which appeared on the market around 1977. You had the competition u. a. a concept based entirely on 32-bit processing, meanwhile the competition only operated in the 16-bit world. Prime did not remain alone in the 32-bit market for long; the big competitor DEC quickly followed suit. Another advantage of the P400 was the microcode-based task switching, a two-dimensional task list management ("ready list") and a 2K hardware cache. This meant that they were orders of magnitude ahead of the competition. In practically all multi-user benchmarks with random load distribution, the Prime machines were able to cope with the tasks set with considerably less hardware. Only in real real-time-oriented applications did they mostly have to fit. A short time later the 3-board model P500 came onto the market. His 3rd CPU board supported a "Business Instruction Set" in the microcode, which v. a. was responsible for string and fixed point operations. This should facilitate the marketing of the commercial tools ( COBOL , FORMS , Codasyl-DBMS ). The Prime SW proved to be particularly strong in the network area. At the end of the 1970s, X.25 / TCP-IP was used to demonstrate e-mail traffic between computer models from different manufacturers at the Hanover Fair. It was also possible to operate different hard disks in a network worldwide ("PR1MENET"). IBM systems could be connected to Prime systems using SDLC controllers .
The roughly twice as powerful P750 (2 CPU boards) appeared in 1979 before the VAX / 780. Building on the 750 Prime, double processor versions (8750, 8850, each 2 * 2 CPU boards + 1 sync board) and ever faster versions with increased clock rates were also created. The dual processor variants were approx. 60% faster than the equivalent single processor models.
CAD / CAM
In addition to the DEC machines, prime computers have been one of the most important target environments for suppliers of CAD-CAM software for many years. In particular, the connection to the CAD system MEDUSA of the British software company Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS) should be mentioned, which was sold exclusively in Germany, Austria and Switzerland by the AGS company. Prime held the distribution rights for MEDUSA for the American market. In 1984 Computervision took over all activities of CIS and AGS. Computervision agreed with Prime Computer that Prime would receive MEDUSA version 4.06 in the source code, and that both companies would continue to develop MEDUSA independently from this point in time and were also allowed to sell it worldwide. Shortly afterwards, Computervision switched to version 5.0, while Prime entered the market with version Prime Medusa 1.0.
In 1988, Prime Computer took over the software company Computervision. Prime was divided into the two pillars Prime Hardware, which was responsible for the proprietary computers, and Prime Computervision , which was responsible for the CAD / CAM business with MEDUSA and CADDS. Another mainstay in the graphics sector was SGI , whose hardware was used together with the 3D body software "PDGS" from around 1985 at Ford.
After the proprietary PRIMOS computer production was discontinued and the maintenance obligations were transferred to another manufacturer, the company concentrated on the CAD-CAM software business and renamed it to Computer Vision . In the mid-1990s, Computervision was taken over by Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC).
Today there are still active internet forums and die-hard fans of Prime's 32-bit super minis.
