Sperry Rand
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...
documents as the Univac M-460, was
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) – was an American
UNIVAC
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...
. UNIVAC later released a commercial version, the UNIVAC 490. That system was later upgraded to a multiprocessor configuration as the 494.
In accordance with the
Joint Electronics Type Designation System
The Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS), which was previously known as the Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System (AN System. JAN) and the Joint Communications-Electronics Nomenclature System, is a method developed by the U.S. War Depa ...
(JETDS), the "''AN/USQ-17''" designation represents the 17th design of an Army-Navy
electronic device
Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other electrically charged particles. It is a subfield of physics and ...
for general utility special combination equipment. The JETDS system also now is used to name all
Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...
electronic systems.
Overview
The machine was the size and shape of a refrigerator, about four feet high (roughly 1.20 meters), with a hinged lid for access. Shortly after completing the prototype design, Cray left to join
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the N ...
. When the Navy awarded Sperry Rand a US$50 million contract to build the AN/USQ-17, Univac engineers redesigned the entire machine from scratch using silicon transistors. They retained the
instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, s ...
, so that programs developed for the original machine would still run on the new one.
As part of the redesign it was decided to improve access, and the second version was designed to stand upright, like an old fashioned double-door
refrigerator
A refrigerator, commonly shortened to fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermal insulation, thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to ...
, about six feet tall (roughly 1.80 m). This new design was designated the AN/USQ-20.
Instructions were represented as 30-bit words, in the following format:
f 6 bits function code
j 3 bits jump condition designator
k 3 bits partial word designator
b 3 bits which index register to use
y 15 bits operand address in memory
Numbers were represented as 30-bit
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...
s, this allowed for five 6-bit alphanumeric characters per word.
The main memory was 32,768 = 32 K words of
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), ...
.
The available
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 were:
*One 30-bit accumulator (A).
*One 30-bit Q register (combined with A to give a total of 60 bits for the result of multiplication or the dividend in division).
*Seven 15-bit
index register
An index register in a computer's central processing unit, CPU is a processor register (or an assigned memory location) used for pointing to operand addresses during the run of a program. It is useful for stepping through String (computer science ...
s (B1–B7).
The instruction format defined for the AN/USQ-17 marked the beginning of an instruction set which would be carried on, with many changes along the way, into later UNIVAC computers including the
UNIVAC 1100/2200 series
The UNIVAC 1100/2200 series is a series of compatible 36-bit computer systems, beginning with the UNIVAC 1107 in 1962, initially made by Sperry Rand. The series continues to be supported today by Unisys Corporation as the ClearPath Dorado Serie ...
, which is still in use .
First delivery of NTDS and related U.S. Navy computers
List of military electronics of the United States
This article lists American military electronic instruments/systems along with brief descriptions. This list specifically identifies electronic devices which are assigned designations according to the Joint Electronics Type Designation System ...
*
List of UNIVAC products
This is a list of UNIVAC products. It ends in 1986, the year that Sperry Corporation merged with Burroughs Corporation to form Unisys as a result of a hostile takeover bid launched by Burrough's CEO W. Michael Blumenthal.
The Remington Rand years ...
*
History of computing hardware
The history of computing hardware spans the developments from early devices used for simple calculations to today's complex computers, encompassing advancements in both analog and digital technology.
The first aids to computation were purely mec ...