The IBM 7950 is a computer, also known as Harvest , a single-copy version of the IBM 7030 Stretch computer for the US National Security Agency . The computer was created by IBM , supplied by the NSA in February 1962, and worked there until 1976. The main purpose of Harvest was cryptanalysis and a quick search of words in databases.
Content
Development History
The final design of the IBM Stretch computer modification was approved by the NSA in April 1958. The car entered the NSA in February 1962. The chief computer engineer was James H. Pomerene. Several additional instructions have been added to Harvest to the IBM Stretch instruction set, apart from which it could not work.
NSA tests showed that Harvest was 50-200 times more powerful than the best commercial vehicles, depending on the task. With the ability to read 3 million characters per minute, Harvest could do in minutes what older computers took weeks to do. For example, in 1968, Harvest took 3 hours 50 minutes to search for 7 thousand searched words and phrases in seven million texts of radio intercepts , which is equivalent to processing 30 thousand texts of intercepts per minute. For 15 years, this computer helped the NSA break open ciphers and, in particular, helped break some of the important ciphers of the USSR in the 1970s [1] .
The IBM 7950 Harvest worked at the NSA until 1976. When the TRACTOR tape drive was completely worn out and IBM refused to replace it, the NSA wrote off the IBM 7950 Harvest and replaced it with one of the first Cray-1 supercomputer models.
Architecture
In essence, Harvest was an IBM Stretch plus a streaming processing unit. The complex consisted of the following elements:
- IBM 7951 Streaming Processor
- IBM 7952 - High Performance Magnetic Core Memory
- IBM 7955 is a tape recording system known as TRACTOR
- IBM 7959 High Performance I / O
See also
- Cryptanalytic computer
Notes
- ↑ "Harvest: NSA's Ultra High-Speed Computer," Cryptologic Milestones, issue 13 (November 1968): pp. 2-3, NSA FOIA; Sam Snyder, "Age of the Computer," NSA Newsletter, November 1977, p. 15.
Literature
- (1986) IBM's Early Computers - A Technical History ( ISBN 0262523930 )
- Matthew Aid. The Secret Sentry - The Untold History of the National Security Agency. - 2010. - ISBN 160819096X . (eng.)
Links
- IBM Harvest documentation at bitsavers.org