mainframe computer
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
s manufactured by
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
in the 1960s. It consisted of the CDC 6200, CDC 6300,
CDC 6400 The CDC 6000 series is a discontinued family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of the CDC 6200, CDC 6300, CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which were all extremely rapid a ...
,
CDC 6500 The CDC 6000 series is a discontinued family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of the CDC 6200, CDC 6300, CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which were all extremely rapi ...
,
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...
and CDC 6700 computers, which were all extremely rapid and efficient for their time. Each is a large,
solid-state
Solid state, or solid matter, is one of the four fundamental states of matter.
Solid state may also refer to:
Electronics
* Solid-state electronics, circuits built of solid materials
* Solid state ionics, study of ionic conductors and their use ...
, general-purpose, digital computer that performs scientific and business data processing as well as
multiprogramming
In computing, multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a result ...
,
multiprocessing
Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...
time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence a ...
, and
data management
Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource.
Concept
The concept of data management arose in the 1980s as technology moved from sequential processing (first punched cards, then magnetic tape) to r ...
tasks under the control of the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
called
SCOPE
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* Cinem ...
(Supervisory Control Of Program Execution). By 1970 there also was a time-sharing oriented operating system named KRONOS. They were part of the first generation of
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
s. The 6600 was the flagship of Control Data's 6000 series.
Overview
The CDC 6000 series computers are composed of four main functional devices:
* the central memory
* one or two high-speed central processors
* ten peripheral processors ( Peripheral Processing Unit, or PPU) and
* a display console.
The 6000 series uses "reduced instruction set" (
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
) many years before such a term was invented and have a distributed architecture.
The family's members differ primarily by the number and kind of central processor(s):
* The CDC 6600 is a single CPU with 10 functional units that can operate in parallel, each working on an instruction at the same time.
* The CDC 6400 is a single CPU with an identical instruction set, but with a single unified arithmetic function unit that can only do one instruction at a time.
* The CDC 6500 is a dual-CPU system with two 6400 central processors
* The CDC 6700 is also a dual-CPU system, with a 6600 and a 6400 central processor.
Certain features and nomenclature had also been used in the earlier
CDC 3000
The CDC 3000 series ("thirty-six hundred" of "thirty-one hundred") computers from Control Data Corporation were mid-1960s follow-ons to the CDC 1604 and CDC 924 systems.
Over time, a range of machines were produced - divided into
* the 48-bit upp ...
series:
*Arithmetic was ones complement.
* The name
COMPASS
A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with ...
was used by CDC for the
assembly language
In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...
s on both families.
* The name
SCOPE
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* Cinem ...
was used for its operating system implementations on the
3000 3000 or ''variation'', may refer to:
* 3000 (number), the number three thousand
* A.D. 3000, the last year of the 30th century and the 3rd millennium CE
* 3000 BCE, a year in the 3rd millennium BC
* 3000s AD, a decade, century, millennium in the 4 ...
and 6000 series."CDC delivered an early version of their SCOPE operating system for the 3600"
The only currently (as of 2018) running CDC 6000 series machine, a 6500, has been restored by Living Computers: Museum + Labs It was built in 1967 and used by
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which h ...
for LCM+L.
History
The first member of the CDC 6000 series was the
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...
, designed by
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996 ) was an American
James E. Thornton in
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin
Chippewa Falls is a city located on the Chippewa River in Chippewa County in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 14,778 in the 2021 census. Incorporated as a city in 1869, it is the county seat of Chippewa Cou ...
. It was introduced in September 1964 and performs up to three million instructions per second, three times faster than the
IBM Stretch
The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three ti ...
, the speed champion for the previous couple of years."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three times faster than the next fastest machine of its day, the IBM 7030 Stretch." It remained the fastest machine for five years until the
CDC 7600
The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray-designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz (27.5 ns clock cycle) and had a 65 Kword primary memory (with a 6 ...
was launched. The machine was
Freon
Freon ( ) is a registered trademark of the Chemours Company and generic descriptor for a number of halocarbon products. They are stable, nonflammable, low toxicity gases or liquids which have generally been used as refrigerants and as aerosol prop ...
refrigerant cooled.
Control Data manufactured about 100 machines of this type, selling for $6 to $10 million each.
The next system to be introduced was the
CDC 6400 The CDC 6000 series is a discontinued family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of the CDC 6200, CDC 6300, CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which were all extremely rapid a ...
, delivered in April 1966. The 6400 central processor is a slower, less expensive implementation with serial processing, rather than the 6600's parallel functional units. All other aspects of the 6400 are identical to the 6600. Then followed a machine with dual 6400-style central processors, the CDC 6500, designed principally by James E. Thornton, in October 1967. And finally, the CDC 6700, with both a 6600-style CPU and a 6400-style CPU, was released in October 1969.
Subsequent special edition options were custom-developed for the series, including:
* Attaching a second system configured without a Central Processor (numbered 6416 and identified as "Augmented I/O Buffer and Control) to the first; the combined total effectively was 20 peripheral and control processors with 24 channels, and the purpose was to support additional peripherals and "significantly increase the multiprogramming and batch job processing of the 6000 series." (A 30-PPU, 36 channel 6600 machine was operated by Control Data's Software Research Lab during 1971–1973 as the Minneapolis Cybernet host, but this version was never sold commercially.)
* Control Data also marketed a CDC 6400 with a smaller number of peripheral processors:
** CDC 6415–7 with seven peripheral processors
** CDC 6415–8 with eight peripheral processors
** CDC 6415–9 with nine peripheral processors
Hardware
Central memory (CM)
In all the CDC 6000 series computers, the central processor communicates with around seven simultaneously active programs (
jobs Jobs may refer to:
* Job, an activity that people do for regular income gain
People
* Steve Jobs (1955–2011), co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc
** Steve Jobs (disambiguation)
* Laurene Powell Jobs (born 1963), widow of Steve Jobs
* Lisa ...
), which reside in central memory. Instructions from these programs are read into the central processor registers and are executed by the central processor at scheduled intervals. The results are then returned to central memory.
Information is stored in central memory in the form of words. The length of each word is 60
binary digit
Binary may refer to:
Science and technology Mathematics
* Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1)
* Binary function, a function that takes two arguments
* Binary operation, a mathematical operation that t ...
s (
bit
The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represente ...
s). The highly efficient address and data control mechanisms involved permit a word to be moved into or out of central memory in as little as 100 nanoseconds.
Extended Core Storage (ECS)
An extended core storage unit (ECS) provides additional memory storage and enhances the powerful computing capabilities of the CDC 6000 series computers. The unit contains interleaved core banks, each one ECS word (488 bits) wide and an 488 bit buffer for each bank.
While nominally slower than CM, ECS included a buffer (cache) that in some applications gave ECS better performance than CM. However, with a more common reference pattern the CM was still faster.
Central processor
The central processor was the high-speed arithmetic unit that functioned as the workhorse of the computer. It performed the addition, subtraction, and logical operations and all of the multiplication, division, incrementing, indexing, and branching instructions for user programs. Note that in the CDC 6000 architecture, the central processing unit performed no
input/output
In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...
(I/O) operations. Input/Output was totally asynchronous, and performed by peripheral processors.
A 6000 series CPU contained 24 operating
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts entertainment, and media Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), th ...
s, designated X0–X7, A0–A7, and B0–B7. The eight X registers were each 60 bits long, and used for most data manipulation—both integer and floating point. The eight B registers were 18 bits long, and generally used for indexing and address storage. Register B0 was hard-wired to always return 0. By software convention, register B1 was generally set to 1. (This often allowed the use of 15-bit instructions instead of 30-bit instructions.) The eight 18-bit A registers were 'coupled' to their corresponding X registers in an interesting way: setting an address into any of registers A1 through A5 caused a memory load of the contents of that address into the corresponding X registers. Likewise, setting an address into registers A6 and A7 caused a memory store into that location in memory from X6 or X7. Registers A0 and X0 were not coupled in this way, so could be used as scratch registers. However A0 and X0 were used when addressing CDCs Extended Core Storage (ECS).
Instructions were either 15 or 30 bits long, so there could be up to four instructions per
60-bit
A 60-bit word is typically used for high-precision floating-point calculations; it can also store 10 6-bit characters.
Examples
The only widely-used computers with 60-bit words were produced by Control Data Corporation (CDC), including the C ...
word. A 60-bit word could contain any combination of 15-bit and 30-bit instructions that fit within the word, but a 30-bit instruction could not wrap to the next word. The
op code
In computing, an opcode (abbreviated from operation code, also known as instruction machine code, instruction code, instruction syllable, instruction parcel or opstring) is the portion of a machine language instruction that specifies the operat ...
s were six bits long. The remainder of the instruction was either three three-bit register fields (two operands and one result), or two registers with an 18-bit immediate constant. All instructions were 'register to register'. For example, the following
COMPASS
A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with ...
(assembly language) code loads two values from memory, performs a 60-bit integer add, then stores the result:
SA1 X SET REGISTER A1 TO ADDRESS OF X; LOADS X1 FROM THAT ADDRESS
SA2 Y SET REGISTER A2 TO ADDRESS OF Y; LOADS X2 FROM THAT ADDRESS
IX6 X1+X2 LONG INTEGER ADD REGISTERS X1 AND X2, RESULT INTO X6
SA6 A1 SET REGISTER A6 TO (A1); STORES X6 TO X; THUS, X += Y
The central processor used in the CDC 6400 series contained a ''unified arithmetic element'' which performed one machine instruction at a time. Depending on instruction type, an instruction could take anywhere from a relatively fast five
clock cycle
In electronics and especially synchronous digital circuits, a clock signal (historically also known as ''logic beat'') oscillates between a high and a low state and is used like a metronome to coordinate actions of digital circuits.
A clock sig ...
s (18-bit integer arithmetic) to as many as 68 clock cycles (60-bit population count). The CDC 6500 was identical to the 6400, but included two identical 6400 CPUs. Thus the CDC 6500 could nearly double the computational throughput of the machine. (But not the I/O throughput; that was still limited by the slowness of external I/O devices served by the same 10 PPs/12 Channels. But many CDC customers worked on compute-bound problems; the 6500 was perfect for them.)
The CDC 6600 computer, like the CDC 6400, has just one central processor. However, its central processor offered much greater efficiency. The processor was divided into 10 individual ''functional units'', each of which was designed for a specific type of operation. All 10 functional units could operate simultaneously, each working on their own operation. The function units provided were: branch, Boolean, shift, long integer add,
floating-point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...
add, floating-point divide, two floating-point multipliers, and two ''increment'' (18-bit integer add) units. Functional unit latencies were between a very fast three clock cycles (increment add) and 29 clock cycles (floating-point divide).
The 6600 processor could issue a new instruction every clock cycle, assuming that various processor (functional unit, register) resources were available. These resources were kept track of by a ''scoreboard'' mechanism. Also contributing to keeping the issue rate high was an ''instruction stack'', which
cache
Cache, caching, or caché may refer to:
Places United States
* Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community
* Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community
* Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County
* Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah
* Cache County ...
d the contents of eight instruction words (32 short instructions or 16 long instructions, or a combination). Small loops could reside entirely within the stack, eliminating memory latency from instruction fetches.
Both the 6400 and 6600 CPUs had a cycle time of 100 ns (10MHz). Due to the serial nature of the 6400 CPU, its exact speed was heavily dependent on instruction mix, but generally around 1 MIPS. Floating-point additions were fairly fast at 11 clock cycles, however floating-point multiplication was very slow at 57 clock cycles. Thus its floating point speed would depend heavily on the mix of operations and could be under 200 kFLOPS. The 6600 was, of course, much faster. With good compiler instruction scheduling, the machine could approach its theoretical peak of 10 MIPS. Floating-point additions took four clock cycles, and floating-point multiplies took 10 clocks (but there were two multiply functional units, so two operations could be processing at the same time.) The 6600 could therefore have a peak floating point speed of 2-3 MFLOPS.
The CDC 6700 computer combined the best features of the other three computers. Like the CDC 6500, it had two central processors. One was a CDC 6400/CDC 6500 central processor with the unified arithmetic section; the other was the more efficient CDC 6600 central processor. The combination made the CDC 6700 the fastest and the most powerful of the CDC 6000 series.
Peripheral processors
The central processor shares access to central memory with up to ten peripheral processors (PPs). Each peripheral processor is an individual computer with its own 1 μs memory of 4K words, each with 12 bits. (They were somewhat similar to
CDC 160A
The CDC 160 series was a series of minicomputers built by Control Data Corporation. The CDC 160 and CDC 160-A were 12-bit minicomputers built from 1960 to 1965; the CDC 160G was a 13-bit minicomputer, with an extended version of the CDC 160-A i ...
minicomputers, sharing the 12-bit word length and portions of the instruction set.)
While the PPs were designed as an interface to the 12 I/O
channels
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
, portions of the
Chippewa Operating System
The Chippewa Operating System (COS) is a discontinued operating system developed by Control Data Corporation for the CDC 6600, generally considered the first supercomputer in the world. The Chippewa was initially developed as an experimental system ...
(COS), and systems derived from it, e.g.,
SCOPE
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* Cinem ...
, MACE, KRONOS, NOS, and NOS/BE, ran on the PPs. Only the PPs have access to the channels and can perform input/output: the transfer of information between central memory and peripheral devices such as
disk
Disk or disc may refer to:
* Disk (mathematics), a geometric shape
* Disk storage
Music
* Disc (band), an American experimental music band
* ''Disk'' (album), a 1995 EP by Moby
Other uses
* Disk (functional analysis), a subset of a vector sp ...
s and
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
units. They relieve the central processor of all input/output tasks, so that it can perform calculations while the peripheral processors are engaged in input/output and operating system functions. This feature promotes rapid overall processing of user programs. Much of the operating system ran on the PPs, thus leaving the full power of the Central Processor available for user programs.
Each peripheral processor can add, subtract, and perform logical operations. Special instructions perform data transfer between processor memory and, via the channels, peripheral devices at up to 1 μs per word. The peripheral processors are collectively implemented as a
barrel processor
A barrel processor is a CPU that switches between threads of execution on every cycle. This CPU design technique is also known as "interleaved" or "fine-grained" temporal multithreading. Unlike simultaneous multithreading in modern superscala ...
. Each executes routines independently of the others. They are a loose predecessor of bus mastering or
direct memory access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU).
Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is t ...
.
Instructions used a 6-bit op code, thus leaving only 6 bits for an operand. It was also possible to combine the next word's 12 bits, to form an 18-bit address (the size needed to access the full 131,072 words of Central Memory).
Data channels
For input or output, each peripheral processor accesses a peripheral device over a communication link called a data channel. One peripheral device can be connected to each data channel; however, a channel can be modified with hardware to service more than one device.
Each peripheral processor can communicate with any peripheral device if another peripheral processor is not using the data channel connected to that device. In other words, only one peripheral processor at a time can use a particular data channel.
Display console
In addition to communication between peripheral devices and peripheral processors, communication takes place between the computer operator and the operating system. This was made possible by the computer console, which had two CRT screens.
This display console was a significant departure from conventional computer consoles of the time, which contained hundreds of blinking lights and switches for every state bit in the machine. (See ''
front panel
A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. The front panel usually consisted of arrays of indicator lamps, digit and symbol displays, to ...
'' for an example.) By comparison, the 6000 series console was an elegant design: simple, fast and reliable.
The console screens were
calligraphic
Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as ...
, not
raster
Raster may refer to:
* Raster graphics, graphical techniques using arrays of pixel values
* Raster graphics editor, a computer program
* Raster scan, the pattern of image readout, transmission, storage, and reconstruction in television and compu ...
based. Analog circuitry steered the electron beams to draw the individual characters on the screen. One of the peripheral processors ran a dedicated program called "DSD" (Dynamic System Display), which drove the console. Coding in DSD needed to be fast as it needed to continually redraw the screen quickly enough to avoid visible flicker.
DSD displayed information about the system and the jobs in process. The console also included a keyboard through which the operator could enter requests to modify stored programs and display information about jobs in or awaiting execution.
A full-screen editor, called O26 (after the IBM model 026
key punch
A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator. Other devices included here for that same function include the gang punch, the pantograph punch, ...
, with the first character made alphabetic due to operating system restrictions), could be run on the operator console. This
text editor
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...
appeared in 1967—which made it one of the first full-screen editors. (Unfortunately, it took CDC another 15 years to offer FSE, a full-screen editor for normal
time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence a ...
users on CDCs Network Operating System.)
There were also a variety of games that were written using the operator console. These included BAT (a baseball game), KAL (a
kaleidoscope
A kaleidoscope () is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when v ...
), DOG (
Snoopy
Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip ''Peanuts'' by Charles M. Schulz. He can also be found in all of the ''Peanuts'' films and television specials. Since his debut on October 4, 1950, Snoopy has become one of the most recog ...
flying his doghouse across the screens), ADC (
Andy Capp
''Andy Capp'' is a British comic strip created by cartoonist Reg Smythe, seen in the ''Daily Mirror'' and the ''Sunday Mirror'' newspapers since 5 August 1957. Originally a single-panel cartoon, it was later expanded to four panels.
The s ...
strutting across the screens), EYE (changed the screens into giant eyeballs, then winked them), PAC (a
Pac-Man
originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...
-like game), a lunar lander simulator, and more.
Minimum configuration
The minimum hardware requirements of a CDC 6000 series computer system consisted of the computer, including 32,768 words of central memory storage, any combination of disks, disk packs, or drums to provide 24 million characters of mass storage, a
punched card reader
A computer punched card reader or just computer card reader is a computer input device used to read computer programs in either source or executable form and data from punched cards. A computer card punch is a computer output device that punches ...
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
with controllers, and two 7-track magnetic tape units.
Larger systems could be obtained by including optional equipment such as additional central memory, extended core storage (ECS), additional disk or drum units, card readers, punches, printers, and tape units. Graphic
plotter
A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting pl ...
s and
microfilm
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...
recorders were also available.
Peripherals
* CDC 405 Card Reader - Unit reads 80-column cards at 1200 cards a minute and 51-column cards at 1600 cards per minute. Each tray holds 4000 cards to reduce the rate of required loading.
* CDC 6602/6612 Console Display
* CDC 6603 Disk System
* CDC 626 Magnetic Tape Transports
* CDC 6671 Communications Multiplexer - supported up to 16 synchronous data connections up to 4800 bps each for Remote Job Entry
* CDC 6676 Communications Multiplexer - supported up to 64 asynchronous data connections up to 300 bps each for timesharing access.
* CDC 6682/6683 Satellite Coupler
* CDC 6681 Data Channel Converter
Versions
The CDC 6600 was the flagship. The CDC 6400 was a slower, lower-performance CPU that cost significantly less.
The CDC 6500 was a dual CPU 6400, with two CPUs but only one set of I/O PPs, designed for computation-bound problems. The CDC 6700 was also a dual CPU machine, which had one 6600 CPU and one 6400 CPU. The CDC 6415 was an even cheaper and slower machine; it had a 6400 CPU but was available with only seven, eight, or nine PPUs instead of the normal ten. The CDC 6416 was an upgrade that could be added to a 6000 series machine; it added an extra PPU bank, giving a total of 20 PPUs and 24 channels, designed for significantly improved I/O performance.
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
of the 6000 series of computer systems manufactured by
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
.
Generally considered to be the first successful
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
, it outperformed its fastest predecessor, the
IBM 7030 Stretch
The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three t ...
, by a factor of three. With performance of up to three
megaFLOPS
In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...
, the CDC 6600, of which about 100 were sold, was the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the
CDC 7600
The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray-designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz (27.5 ns clock cycle) and had a 65 Kword primary memory (with a 6 ...
.
The CDC 6600 anticipated the
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
design philosophy and, unusually, employed a ones'-complement representation of integers. Its successors would continue the architectural tradition for more than 30 years until the late 1980s, and were the last chips designed with ones'-complement integers.
The CDC 6600 was also the first widespread computer to include a
Load–store architecture
In computer engineering, a load–store architecture is an instruction set architecture that divides instructions into two categories: memory access ( load and store between memory and registers) and ALU operations (which only occur between regis ...
, with the writing to its address registers triggering memory load or store of data from its data registers.
The first CDC 6600s were delivered in 1965 to the Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs (managed by the University of California). Serial #4 went to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Courant Institute
The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...
at NYU in Greenwich Village, New York CIty. The first delivery outside the US went to
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
laboratory near
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
,
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, where it was used to analyse the two to three million photographs of bubble-chamber tracks that CERN experiments were producing every year. In 1966 another CDC 6600 was delivered to the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory
Lawrence may refer to:
Education Colleges and universities
* Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States
* Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
Preparator ...
, part of the
University of California at Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
, where it was used for the analysis of nuclear events photographed inside the Alvarez bubble chamber. The
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
had one delivered for its Computer Science and Mathematics Departments, and installed underground on its main campus, tucked into a hillside with one side exposed, for cooling efficiency.
A CDC 6600 is on display at the
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...
in
Mountain View, California
Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376.
Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...
.
The 6400
The CDC 6400, a member of the CDC 6000 series, was a mainframe computer made by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. The central processing unit was architecturally compatible with the
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...
. In contrast to the 6600, which had 10 parallel functional units which could work on multiple instructions at the same time, the 6400 had a unified arithmetic unit, which could only work on a single instruction at a time. This resulted in a slower, lower-performance CPU, but one that cost significantly less. Memory, peripheral processor-based
input/output
In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...
(I/O), and peripherals were otherwise identical to the 6600.
In 1966, the Computing Center (german: Rechenzentrum) of the RWTH Aachen University acquired a CDC 6400, the first
Control Data
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
and the second one in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
after the
European Organization for Nuclear Research
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
(CERN). It served the entire university also by 64 remote-line teletypes (TTY) until it was replaced by a CDC Cyber 175 computer in 1976.
File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F031433-0011, Aachen, Technische Hochschule, Rechenzentrum.jpg, Operator console of the CDC 6400 with four magnetic tape memory units in the background with a magnetic tape controller unit in front of them at the Rechenzentrum (Computer Center) of RWTH Aachen University,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
(1970).
File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F031433-0012, Aachen, Technische Hochschule, Rechenzentrum.jpg, Seven-track magnetic tape memory units (CDC 604) at the Rechenzentrum (Computer Center) of RWTH Aachen University, Germany (1970)
File:CDC 6400 US Navy.jpg, CDC 6400 used by the US Navy
Dual CPU systems
The 6500
The CDC 6500, which features a dual CPU 6400, is the third supercomputer in the 6000 series manufactured by the
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
and designed by
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
pioneer
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996 ) was an American
Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
- bought in 1968, meant to replace its
CDC 3600
The CDC 3000 series ("thirty-six hundred" of "thirty-one hundred") computers from Control Data Corporation were mid-1960s follow-ons to the CDC 1604 and CDC 924 systems.
Over time, a range of machines were produced - divided into
* the 48-bit up ...
, and it was the only academic mainframe on campus.
*
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
- upgraded from a 6400 to a 6500 in April 1969.
* the technical lab at the Patrick Air Force Base in 1978.
* the Laboratory of Computing Techniques and Automation in the
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, russian: Объединённый институт ядерных исследований, ОИЯИ), in Dubna, Moscow Oblast (110 km north of Moscow), Russia, is an international research c ...
(USSR) - originally bought CDC 6200 in 1972, later upgraded to 6500, retired in 1995
File:LCM - CDC 501 printer and other equipment - 01.jpg, CDC 6500 (right) and other equipment
File:LCM - CDC 6500 detail 02.jpg, Detailed image of the CDC 6500 at LCM+L
File:LCM - CDC 6500 detail 01.jpg, Detailed image of the CDC 6500 at LCM+L
The 6700
Composed of a 6600 and a 6400, the CDC 6700 was the most powerful of the 6000 series.
See also
*
CDC Cyber
The CDC Cyber range of mainframe-class supercomputers were the primary products of Control Data Corporation (CDC) during the 1970s and 1980s. In their day, they were the computer architecture of choice for scientific and mathematically inten ...
- contained the successors to the 6000 series computers
Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota. Engineers include Robert Moe, Wayne Specker, Dennis Grinna, Tom Rowan, Maurice Hutson, Curt Alexander, Don Pagelkopf, Maris Bergmanis, Dolan Toth, Chuck Hawley, Larry Krueger, Mike Pavlov, Dave Resnick, Howard Krohn, Bill Bhend, Kent Steiner, Raymon Kort, and Neil R. Lincoln. Discussion topics include
CDC 1604
The CDC 1604 was a 48-bit computing, 48-bit computer designed and manufactured by Seymour Cray and his team at the Control Data Corporation (CDC). The 1604 is known as one of the first commercially successful transistor computer, transistorized co ...
,
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...
,
CDC 7600
The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray-designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz (27.5 ns clock cycle) and had a 65 Kword primary memory (with a 6 ...
, and
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996 ) was an American
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which h ...