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 particular type of computer architecture where every 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 dat ...
[, section "II.", "PREVIOUS WORK"] digital computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
built during 1958–1961 (partially operational beginning in 1959) on the campus of
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universitie ...
,
Houston
Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
, 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, 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.
The type kn ...
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 an overdriven bipolar junction transistor (BJT) differential amplifier with single-ended input and limited emitter current to ...
. It was designed by
Martin H. Graham.
A copy of the machine called OSAGE was built and operated at the
University of Oklahoma
, mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State"
, type = Public research university
, established =
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $2.7billion (2021)
, p ...
.
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 ( oscilloscope), pic ...
or "
Williams tube" array,
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Com ...
core memory
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
was introduced in 1966, followed by
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe Histor ...
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 ...
s, the R1 had reached its full 32k word capacity, although the original
electrostatic
Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies electric charges at rest (static electricity).
Since classical times, it has been known that some materials, such as amber, attract lightweight particles after rubbing. The Greek word for am ...
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
* High availability
* Reliability (computer networking), a ...
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-only. ...
s, each 54 bits in size, in addition to a constant
zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usuall ...
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