The IBM 7040 was a historic but short-lived model of

transistor computer A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, w ...

built in the 1960s. IBM 7330 on white background

History

It was announced by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

in December 1961, but did not ship until April 1963. A later member of the

IBM 700/7000 series The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (Mainframe computer, mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s ...

of scientific computers, it was a scaled-down version of the

IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation Transistor computer, transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member o ...

. It was not fully compatible with the 7090. Some 7090 features, including index registers, character instructions and floating point, were extra-cost options. It also featured a different input/output architecture, based on the IBM 1414 data synchronizer, allowing more modern IBM peripherals to be used. A model designed to be compatible with the 7040 with more performance was announced as the 7044 at the same time. Peter Fagg headed the development of the 7040 under executive Bob O. Evans. A number of IBM 7040 and 7044 computers were shipped, but it was eventually made obsolete by the

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

family, announced in 1964. The schedule delays caused by IBM's multiple incompatible architectures provided motivation for the unified System/360 family. The 7040 proved popular for use at universities, due to its comparatively low price. For example, one was installed in May 1965 at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. One of the first in Canada was at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, bought by professor

J. Wesley Graham James Wesley Graham, OC was a Canadian professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo. Graham was born on January 17, 1932, in Copper Cliff, Ontario. His interest in computing developed while studying math and physics at the ...

. A team of students was frustrated with the slow performance of the Fortran compiler. In the summer of 1965 they wrote the

WATFOR WATFIV (Waterloo FORTRAN IV), developed at the University of Waterloo, Canada is an implementation of the Fortran computer programming language. It is the successor of WATFOR. WATFIV was used from the late 1960s into the mid-1980s. WATFIV was i ...

compiler for their 7040, which became popular with many newly formed computer science departments. IBM also offered the 7040 (or 7044) as an input-output processor attached to a 7090, in a configuration known as the 7090/7040 Direct Coupled System (DCS). Each computer was slightly modified to be able to interrupt the other. IBM used similar numbers for a model of its eServer pSeries 690

RS/6000 The RISC System/6000 is a family of RISC-based (Reduced Instruction Set Computer-based) Unix servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT PC computer platform in February 1990 an ...

architecture much later. The 7040-681, for example, was withdrawn in 2005.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 7040 7 7040 36-bit computers ja:IBM 7040

History

See also

References

External links