29 Oct
2005
29 Oct
'05
8:06 a.m.
Subject: Re: Japanese computers
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 14:11:24 +0100
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
William Donzelli wrote:
I'm almost certain there was some mention of Parametron, amongst others.
Probably way too early for HITAC. I seem to recall an article about a
project to build a one mega-word memory unit too, which I suppose was a
rather impressive size for then (particularly if you wanted to make it
reliable!). Our machines of that era are all around the 4KW mark...
4KW was common but even the TX2 was far larger than that and that was
pretty early transistor machine. By mid 60s machine of size were in
the 16-64KW range. Keep in mind even the designers of the time understood
that large reasonably fast randomly accessable memory was a factor in
computational speed and overall perfomance.
Of course there was a divergence that appeared during the mid 60s with
Cray, LINC and PDP-8 to mention a number of small word (16bits and under)
machines appearing with smaller memories and simplified archetectures
appealing to the controls and emerging "MiniComputer" market.
As to large memories by 1962 it was well understood the real problem was
heat, power and consistancy of the magnetics and they were well on the way
to a good handle on those. The main enemy was cost. Core was expensive
per bit.
Allison
I'll
see if I can find them when I get back to the UK and scan any
interesting bits in.
I am specifically looking for info on the parametron computers of the late
1950s, and the Hitachi AS/6 (may be called a HITAC in a Japanese
context) of the late 1970s.