ILLIAC I

ILLIAC I

The ILLIAC I ("Illinois Automatic Computer"), a pioneering computer built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a US educational institution, Manchester University UK having built Manchester 1 in 1948.

ILLIAC I was based on the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Von Neumann architecture edited by mathematician John von Neumann. Unlike the other computers of its era, the ILLIAC I and ORDVAC computers were twin copies of the same design, and so therefore they could exchange software. The computer had 2,800 vacuum tubes, measured 10 ft (3 m) by 2 ft (0.6 m) by 8½ ft (2.6 m) (L×B×H), and weighed 5 tons (4.5 t). ILLIAC I was very powerful for its time; in 1956 it had more computing power than all of Bell Labs.

Because the lifetime of the tubes within ILLIAC was about a year, the machine was shut down every day for "preventive maintenance" when older vacuum tubes would be replaced in order to increase reliability. Visiting scholars from Japan assisted in the design of the ILLIAC series of computers, and later developed the MUSASINO-1 computer in Japan. ILLIAC I was retired in 1962, when the ILLIAC II became operational.

Innovations

* 1955, Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson, used ILLIAC I to compose the Illiac Suite which was one of the first pieces of music to be written with the aid of a computer.

* 1957, Mathematician Donald B. Gillies, Physicist, James E. Snyder and Astronomers George C. McVittie, S. P. Wyatt, Ivan R. King and George W. Swenson of the University of Illinois used the ILLIAC I computer to calculate the orbit of the Sputnik I satellite within 2 days of its launch.

* 1960, The first version of the PLATO computer-based education system was implemented on the ILLIAC I by a team led by Donald Bitzer. It serviced a single user. In early 1961, version 2 of PLATO serviced 2 simultaneous users.

ee also

*ILLIAC
*ILLIAC II
*ILLIAC III
*ILLIAC IV
*ORDVAC
*MUSASINO-1

External links

* [http://ems.music.uiuc.edu/history/illiac.html ILLIAC I history including computer music.]
* [http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univOfIllinoisUrbana/illiac/ILLIAC ILLIAC I documentation] at bitsavers.org
* I. R. King, G. C. McVittie, G. W. Swenson, Jr., and S. P. Wyatt, Jr., "Further observations of the first satellite," Nature, No. 4593, November 9, 1957, p. 943.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • ILLIAC — was the name given to a series of supercomputers built at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In all 5 computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974. Design of the ILLIAC VI began in early 2005. ORDVAC ORDVAC was the first …   Wikipedia

  • ILLIAC IV — UC del computador paralelo ILLIAC IV El ILLIAC IV fue uno de los más infames supercomputadores de la historia. Uno de la serie de máquinas de investigación, los ILLIACs de la Universidad de Illinois, el diseño del ILLIAC IV se caracterizó por un… …   Wikipedia Español

  • ILLIAC IV — BackgroundBy the early 1960s computer designs were approaching the point of diminishing returns. At the time, computer design focussed on adding as many instructions as possible to the machines CPU, a concept known as orthogonality , which made… …   Wikipedia

  • ILLIAC II — The ILLIAC II was a revolutionary super computer built by the University of Illinois that became operational in 1962. The concept, proposed in 1958, pioneered ECL circuitry, pipelining, and transistor memory with a design goal of 100x speedup… …   Wikipedia

  • ILLIAC 1 — The ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer), una computadora pionera, hecha en 1952 por la Universidad de Illinois, fue la 1ª computadora para fines educacionales. ILLIAC I se basaba en la arquitectura de von Neumann del Instituto para Estudios… …   Wikipedia Español

  • ILLIAC II — El ILLIAC II fue un computador construido en la Universidad de Illinois y comenzó a funcionar en 1962. ILLIAC II tenía 8192 palabras de memoria de núcleos para el almacenamiento primario, respaladadas por 65,536 palabras de almacenamiento… …   Wikipedia Español

  • ILLIAC III — The ILLIAC III was a fine grained SIMD pattern recognition computer built by the University of Illinois in 1966.This ILLIAC s initial task was image processing of bubble chamber experiments used to detect nuclear particles. Later it was used on… …   Wikipedia

  • ILLIAC — ILLinois Integrator and Automatic Computer ( > IEEE Standard Dictionary ) …   Acronyms

  • ILLIAC — ● ►en sg. np. ►HISTO ILLInois Automatic Computer. Machine faisant partie des tout premiers ordinateurs, issue de la machine IAS …   Dictionnaire d'informatique francophone

  • ILLIAC — ILLinois Integrator and Automatic Computer ( > IEEE Standard Dictionary ) …   Acronyms von A bis Z

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”