Sergei Arkadyevich Krutovskich

Sergei Arkadevich Krutovskikh ( Russian Сергей Аркадьевич Крутовских , English transcription Sergey Arkadevich Krutovskikh ; born March 28, 1928 in Ulyanovsk ; † October 18, 1981 in Moscow ) was a Soviet computer engineer, chief designer at Radon ES.

Life

He went to school in Kuibyshev and studied electrical engineering at the Industrial Institute there, graduating in 1951. He then worked in the special design office SDB 245 in Moscow on electromechanical analog computers (like the differential analyzer : Integral-1, Integral-3M).

From 1956 he became head of the department for the manufacture of semiconductor components and organized their industrial production. Up until then, this had been done at SDB 245 itself, but from then on it only dealt with circuit design and the manufacture of instruments and methods for semiconductor production. The first result was the manufacture of the planar transistors P-6 and P-16, which were widely used in computers in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, followed by integrated circuits .

In 1957 he became chief designer of the computer system Radon for the Soviet Ministry of Defense for air defense. This was a groundbreaking project for the SDB 245 and the SDB was converted into the Scientific Research Institute for Control Computers (SRICC), of which Krutowskich became director in 1960. The institute had to be completely reorganized for this, whereby Krutowskich's organizational talent and energetic commitment showed again. The Radon, completed in 1964, was the first Soviet computer to be built entirely on a semiconductor basis. It was designed redundantly with two processors and operating modes to increase reliability. The SRICC was then responsible for computer systems in aircraft, spacecraft and rockets and Krutowskich was commissioned to develop the Argon series of computers for this purpose, all of which had special requirements for reliability and robustness in use. By 1968, 11 rows of Argon computers had been built, the Argon 11 S being used, for example, in Soviet lunar probes.

In 1967 the decision was made to standardize the development of computers in the Soviet Union (both in hardware and in software) and the successful System / 360 from IBM and its successor was taken as a model in the mainframe area, which led to the ES computer series (see also Uniform System of Electronic Computing Technology , ESER). Krutowskich was the director of the Scientific Research Institute for Digital Electronic Computers (SRIDEC) in Moscow. He was also the chief designer of the ES. The overall project was long-term and other countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (such as Hungary, Bulgaria, the GDR, Cuba, Vietnam) were involved. At times 300,000 people worked on it in production alone. However, some original Soviet developments were also stopped, to the chagrin of some leading computer engineers such as Bashir Ramejew . But Krutowskich prevailed against all odds.

In 1970 he became seriously ill and could not keep up his current pace of work. He remained head of SRIDEC until 1975 and then became head of the Woskhod Research Institute.

In 1965 he received his doctorate (candidate title) with a dissertation on his experience with radon. 1973 followed the habilitation (Russian doctorate) with a dissertation on his experiences with argon and ES. He received the Order of the October Revolution (1970) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1966).

Web links

• Biography of Nitussov in the Russian Virtual Computer Museum