History of Computing at IBM

by Brian Ho
CS147 Dr. Sin-Min Lee
Fall 2009

Brief Overview of IBM

IBM stands for International Business
Machines Corporation.
Founded in 1896 in Endicott, NY

Herman Hollerith
His punch card tabulating
technology was used for
the 1890 census, saving the
U.S. government $5 mil.
Punch cards become the
industry standard of input
for the next 70 years.
His company was later
merged into what is now
IBM.

Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

Became president of IBM
(then C-T-R) in 1914.
Built IBM into a global
corporation by investing in
his employees and
research.
Hired disabled WWI vets
to work for IBM.

1944 ASCC
The worlds first largescale calculating computer.
Automatic Sequence
Control Calculator, a.k.a.
Mark I.
Used electromagnetic
relays to solve addition
problems in < 1 second,
multiplication in 6 seconds,
and division in 12 seconds.

1946 The IBM 603

The IBM 603 Electronic
Multiplier, the first
commercial product to
incorporate electronic
arithmetic circuits.
Used vacuum tubes.
Part of a program to make
super calculators
Would perform faster than
the ASCC.

1946 Chinese Character

Typewriter
WHOA!
Chinese ideographic
character typewriter.
Experienced users
could type at a rate
of 40 to 45 Chinese
words per minute.

WHOA!
Must have
been hard
to use!

Had over 1,000 characters engraved in a cylinder

1948 IBM SSEC

IBMs first large-scale
digital calculating
machine.
It was the first computer
that could modify a stored
program.
Contained 12,000 vacuum
tubes and 21,000
electromechanical relays.

1948 IBM 604

First assemblage of
digital electronics
replaceable as a unit.
Service engineers
could pull out a
defective unit and plug
in a replacement,
saving time.

Thomas Watson, Jr.

Became president of
IBM in 1952
Moved IBM away
from punch cards and
into electronic
computers.

1952 IBM 701 and

First CA Research Lab
IBMs first production
computer.
Designed primarily for
scientific calculations.
Featured a tape drive
vacuum column, which
paved the way for magnetic
tape to become a popular
storage medium.
First West Coast lab is
opened in San Jose, CA.

Magnetic Storage Devices

1953 IBM 650 Magnetic

Drum Calculator
The most popular
computer of the 1950s.
Purchased by
universities and
businesses for
scientific computation
and accounting
capabilities.

1954 NORC
The fastest, most
powerful electronic
computer of its time.
Naval Ordnance
Research Computer
Built for the U.S. Navy
Bureau of Ordnance

1959 IBM 1401

The first high-volume,
stored program, corememory, transistorized
computer.
Included the IBM 1403
printer.

1961 7030 STRETCH

IBMs first attempt in the
supercomputer industry.
Amdahl said it would not meet the
performance requirement the
government asked for.
When it did not meet the
requirements in Los Alamos Nation
Laboratories in New Mexico,
Watson rebated the profit and
development cost to the government
until it could meet the performance
requirements.

IBM 7030 STRETCH (continued)

Pioneered advanced systems concepts:

Lookahead
Pipelining
Use of transistors
Use of bytes

1962 - SABRE
Semi-Automatic BusinessRelated Environment
Two IBM 7090 mainframes
formed the backbone of the
SABRE reservation system
for American Airlines.
Linked high-speed
computers and data
communications in more
than 50 cities.

1964 IBM SYSTEM/360

Incorporated the IBM
Solid Logic
Technology (SLT)
microelectronics
Uses the same
programming
instructions.
Created a family of
compatible computers.

1980 RISC in IBM

IBM Fellow John
Cocke came up with
RISC architecture
Reduced Instruction
Set Computer
IBMs first prototype
employing RISC, the
IBM 801

1985 Token Ring Network

Allowed printers and
computers to be
connected on a
network.
Became the industry
standard

1990 RISC System/6000

A family of 9
workstations that are
some of the fastest in
the industry.
Were able to improve
because of RISC
architecture

1997 Deep Blue

Beat the reigning world
grandmaster of chess
Garry Kasparov in
1997.
First time a computer
ever beat a world
champion in a six game
match.

Blue Gene
IBMs Super Computer Project

Blue Gene
Its name is an allusion to
IBMs nickname Big
Blue and the corporations
official color: blue.
a computer architecture
project designed to
produce supercomputers
with operating speeds in
the petaFLOPS range.

Blue Gene/L
Developed in
partnership with
Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory
(LLNL)
Started in 1999
Was to be applied to
protein folding

Blue Gene/L (continued)

Is a massively parallel
computer.
Utilizes 8 cabinets, each
holding 1,024 computer
nodes
Was upgraded to 16 cabinets
in 2004, achieving 70.72
TFLOPS
Upgraded again multiple
times, resulting in 64 total
cabinets in 2005

Blue Gene/P
Unveiled in 2007
Designed to run
continuously at 1
PFLOPS.
Features a 72-rack
system that can be
scaled to an 884,736processor, 216-rack
cluster

In its 216-rack
configuration, it can
achieve 3-PFLOPS
performance
To be succeeded by
Blue Gene/Q, due to
reach 20 PFLOPS in
2011.

IBM Roadrunner
Fastest supercomputer
in the world.
Achieved 1.456
PFLOPS on May 25,
2008.
Built for U.S.
Department of Energy
(DOE)

IBM Roadrunner (continued)

Uses a series of
TriBlades
A TriBlade consists of:

2 dual-core Opterons
with 16 GB RAM
4 PowerXCell 8i CPUs
with 16 GB Cell RAM
A bunch of other stuff