The
IBM Cambridge Scientific Center was a company research laboratory established in February 1964 in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
. Situated at 545
Technology Square (''Tech Square''), in the same building as
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
's
Project MAC
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...
, it was later renamed the IBM Scientific Center. It is most notable for creating the
CP-40
CP-40 was a research precursor to CP-67, which in turn was part of IBM's then-revolutionary CP/CMS, CP 67CMS – a virtual machine/virtual memory time-sharing operating system for the IBM System/360 Model 67, and the parent of IBM's VM (operati ...
and the ''control program'' portions of
CP/CMS
CP/CMS (Control Program/Cambridge Monitor System) is a discontinued time-sharing operating system of the late 1960s and early 1970s, known for its excellent performance and advanced features. It had three distinct versions:
* CP-40/CMS, an imp ...
, a
virtual machine
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...
operating system developed for the
IBM System/360-67
The IBM System/360 Model 67 (S/360-67) was an important IBM mainframe model in the late 1960s.
* It had "its own powerful operating system... heTime Sharing System monitor (TSS)" offering "virtually instantaneous access to and response from t ...
.
History
The IBM Data Processing Division (DPD) sponsored five Scientific Center research groups in the United States and some others around the world to work with selected universities on a variety of customer-related projects.
The
IBM Research
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
Division in Yorktown Heights, NY was a separate laboratory organization at the
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...
that tended more to "pure" research topics. The DPD Scientific Centers in the late 1960s were located in Palo Alto, California, Houston, Texas, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Grenoble, France. The IBM Time-Life Programming Center in Manhattan, New York worked with the scientific centers but had a slightly different reporting line.
Established by
Norm Rasmussen
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envi ...
, the Cambridge Scientific Center worked with computing groups at both MIT and Harvard, in the same building as
Project MAC
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...
and the IBM Boston Programming Center (BPC). Additional joint projects involved the MIT Lincoln Laboratory on the outskirts of Boston and Brown University in Providence, RI.
The scientific center in 1969 had three main departments: Computer Graphics under Craig Johnson, Operations Research under John Harmon, and Operating Systems under Richard (Rip) Parmelee.
In December 1975 Richard MacKinnon became director of the center, succeeding Dr. William Timlake who, in turn, had succeeded Rasmussen. As the third director, MacKinnon was to serve as its longest-tenured director. During his tenure, Cambridge Scientific Center was responsible for a number of enhancements to the
VM/370
VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules (emulator), Hercules emulator for personal computers.
The ...
operating system which became IBM's most popular interactive computing system. These included: an enhanced scheduler for the operating system based on the work of Lynn Wheeler; the
VNET VNET is an international computer networking system deployed in the mid-1970s and still in current, but highly diminished use. It was developed inside IBM and provided the main email and file-transfer backbone for the company throughout the 1980s an ...
networking capability based upon the work of
Edson Hendricks
Edson C. Hendricks (May 22, 1945 - August 29, 2020), an IBM computer scientist, developed RSCS (later known as VNET), fundamental software that powered the world’s largest network (or network of networks) prior to the Internet and which directl ...
and Tim Hartman; multiprocessor support for the IBM asymmetric MPs, led by Howard Holley; IBM's first
UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
system under VM for the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
; a remote operations capability for VM led by Love Seawright and David Boloker and done in conjunction with the University of Maine, Orono ; a special controller which allowed ASCII terminals to access VM ; and the ASCII software support for the IBM PC which allowed PCs to access IBM and many other non-IBM mainframes . The VNET networking software became the basis for IBM's internal corporate data network and the university BITNET network which was facilitated by Cambridge in conjunction with Yale Computer Center and CUNY computer center . MacKinnon served at Cambridge for 18 years and in July 1992 had the unenviable responsibility of closing CSC when IBM decided to close all its scientific centers worldwide.
IBM closed the center on July 31, 1992.
[Melinda Varian]
''VM and the VM Community: Past, Present, and Future''
April 1991, page 50
Selected publications
R. J. Adair, R. U. Bayles, L. W. Comeau, and R. J. Creasy, "A Virtual Machine System for the 360/40," IBM Corporation, Cambridge Scientific Center, Report No. 320-2007 (May 1966).
R. A. Meyer and L. H. Seawright, "A Virtual Machine Timesharing System," IBM Systems Journal 9, No.3, 199-218 (1970).
R. P. Parmelee, T. L. Peterson, C. C. Tillman, and D. J. Hatfield, "Virtual Storage and Virtual Machine Concepts," IBM Systems Journal 11, No.2, 99-130 (1972).
E. C. Hendricks and T. C. Hartmann, "Evolution of a Virtual Machine Subsystem," IBM Systems Journal 18, No.1, 111-142 (1979).
L. H. Holley, R. P. Parmelee, C. A. Salisbury, and D. N. Saul, "VM/370 Asymmetric Multiprocessing," IBM Systems Journal 18, No.1, 47-70 (1979).
L. H. Seawright and R. A. MacKinnon, "VM/370 - A Study of Multiplicity and Usefulness," IBM Systems Journal 18, No. 1, 4-17 (1979).
R. J. Creasy, "The Origin of the VM/370 Time-Sharing System," IBM Journal of Research and Development 25, No.5, 483-490 (September 1981).
F. T. Kozuh, D. L. Livingston, and T. C. Spillman, "System/370 Capability in a Desktop Computer," IBM Systems Journal 23, No.3, 245-254 (1984).
Y. Bard, "The VM Performance Planning Facility (VMPPF)," Computer Measurement Group (CMG) Transactions 53, 53- 59 (Summer 1986).
See also
*
IBM Research
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
References
{{IBM, state=uncollapsed
IBM facilities
1964 establishments in Massachusetts
1992 disestablishments in Massachusetts
VM (operating system)