The Rice Institute Computer, also known as the Rice Computer or R1, was a 54-bit
tagged architecture
In computer science, a tagged architecture is a type of computer architecture where every word (data type), word of memory constitutes a tagged union, being divided into a number of bits of data, and a ''tag'' section that describes the type of the ...
[, section "II.", "PREVIOUS WORK"] digital computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', wh ...
built during 1958–1961 (partially operational beginning in 1959) on the campus of
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres.
Rice University comp ...
,
Houston
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
,
Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
, United States. Operating as Rice's primary computer until the middle 1960s, the Rice Institute Computer was decommissioned in 1971. The system initially used
vacuum tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve (British usage), or tube (North America) is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. It ...
s and semiconductor diodes for its logic circuits; some later peripherals were built in solid-state
emitter-coupled logic
In electronics, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) is a high-speed integrated circuit bipolar transistor logic family. ECL uses a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) differential amplifier with single-ended input and limited emitter current to avoid th ...
. It was designed by
Martin H. Graham.
A copy of the machine called OSAGE was built and operated at the
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the ...
.
Memory
Memory was implemented using a variety of technologies over the lifetime of the R1. Originally a
cathode ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a ...
or "
Williams tube
The Williams tube, or the Williams–Kilburn tube named after inventors Frederic Calland Williams, Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, is an early form of computer memory. It was the first Random-access memory, random-access digital storage devi ...
" array,
RCA
RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...
core memory
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), ...
was introduced in 1966, followed by
Ampex
Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name ''AMPEX'' is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excell ...
core memory in 1967. Following those two
upgrade
Upgrading is the process of replacing a product with a newer version of the same product. In computing and consumer electronics, an upgrade is generally a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to ...
s, the R1 had reached its full 32k word capacity, although the original
electrostatic
Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies slow-moving or stationary electric charges.
Since classical times, it has been known that some materials, such as amber, attract lightweight particles after rubbing. The Greek word (), mean ...
memory was soon decommissioned due to falling
reliability
Reliability, reliable, or unreliable may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Computing
* Data reliability (disambiguation), a property of some disk arrays in computer storage
* Reliability (computer networking), a category used to des ...
in its old age.
Architecture
The R1 had seven memory-mapped general-purpose
processor register
A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-onl ...
s, each 54 bits in size, in addition to a constant
zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and compl ...
register. For memory addressing, seven 16-bit "B-Registers" were used. The program counter was also held in a writable "B-Register". See the table below for conventions and hardware-enforced usage of these registers.
See also
*
List of vacuum-tube computers
Vacuum-tube computers, now called first-generation computers, are programmable digital computers using vacuum-tube logic circuitry. They were preceded by systems using electromechanical relays and followed by systems built from discrete transi ...
References
External links
* An entry at http://ricehistorycorner.com/2012/01/31/new-info-on-the-rice-computers/ ("New Info on the Rice Computers") by Melissa Keane has some historical information about the Rice Computer (R1) ("and" the R2 also) and it offers at least one photo (with a link to a larger copy of the photo). It also offers at least one old document – the document dated "1 July 71" can be seen at http://ricehistorycorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/r1-3.jpg
*{{Cite web, url=http://www.ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-r.html#RICE-UNIVERSITY, title=RICE UNIVERSITY, last=Weik, first=Martin H., date=Mar 1961, website=ed-thelen.org, series=A Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems
YouTube video "The Completed Computer"
Early computers
Rice University