A very difficult path has been passed from the creation of the first bulky and slow tube computers to supercomputers - high-speed ones based on integrated circuits. Soviet computers nevertheless took place, and specialists from various fields of industry and science, and not just programmers, could work on them. The need for convenient, inexpensive and compact computers arose by the mid-seventies of the last century. The military industry and many other sectors of the country's economy also needed them.
Microcomputer "Electronics"
Soviet computers had their predecessors. These are computers created back in the sixties, easy to use and quite compact machines from the Mir series. They were used mainly for engineering calculations. By the mid-seventies, microprocessors appeared, and this made it possible to start production of "Electronics NTs" and "Electronics S5" - universal microcomputers. In many respects they were already close to personal computers, but the first Soviet computers were used only in production - with their help they controlled technological processes, equipment, and so on.
At the end of the seventies, on an industrial scale, the production of desktop sixteen-bit computers began - quite powerful and compact. These are such models as "Electronics T3-29" and "Iskra 1256", intended for the military, as well as simpler models - "Iskra 226", "Electronics DZ-28" and others. In the early eighties, on the basis of single-board sixteen-bit microcomputers and standard terminals, analogues of interactive computing systems, DVK, were produced.
mid eighties
In the USSR, mass production of such universal computers as the ES-1840, Elektronika-85, DVK-3, BK-0010, Agat, and Mikrosha begins. The computer is undergoing rapid development in our country, and this process continues until the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the early nineties, many dozens of models were being produced.
Soviet computers were of various classes and architectures, including IBM-compatible ones, and without analogues among any of both Soviet and foreign personal computers. For example, "Corvette" - a completely unique computer, as well as "Lvov PK-01", "Vector-06Ts" and some others. Since then, for a short time in the history of domestic computer building, many important events have taken place, which are best discussed in order.
Kiev
Let's look into the past. Year 1948, the town of Feofaniya, not far from the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, a secret laboratory headed by Sergei Alexandrovich Lebedev, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering and head of this laboratory of the Institute of Computer Science and Fine Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. It is there that a small electronic (MESM) is being created at the moment. It was Lebedev who put forward, substantiated and implemented - regardless of Neumann - the basic principles of the operation of a computer with a program stored in memory.
The first machine he created had memory, arithmetic units, as well as input, output, and control devices. She was able to encode and store programs in memory like numbers. She used the binary system to encode commands and numbers, and performed calculations automatically. It contained both arithmetic and logic programs. She had the construction of memory on a hierarchical principle. It was easy to use numerical methods on it to implement calculations. The project, installation and debugging were done in two years by a team of seventeen people - five technicians and twelve researchers. Tests took place in November 1950, and regular operation began in 1951. This is how Soviet computers began.
More Kiev
1965 - the year of the creation of the MIR computer for engineering calculations, the developers of which were scientists from the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics - Glushkov, Blagoveshchensky, Losev, Letinsky, Pogrebinsky, Molchanov, Rabinovich, Stogniy. At the same time, a programming language, ALMIR-65, was implemented for this machine at the microcommand level. The computer was capable of performing about a thousand operations per second, entering and outputting data using an electric typewriter, storing RAM on ferrite cores, and external memory on punched tapes.
In 1969, the personal computer "MIR-2", created in the same place, in Kiev, began to be produced. It turned out to be an improved model, it acted more than ten times faster than the previous ones. Both permanent and working memory were increased. Now, in addition to a punched tape and a typewriter, a vector graphic display with a light pen and magnetic cards were connected to the computer. The analyst became the programming language - one might say, the "grandson" of ALMIRA-65.
Microprocessors
In 1974, the first Soviet microprocessors were produced - sectional models with microprogram control and a four- or eight-bit section. For the K532 series, for example, it was typical low power consumption, a wide range of supply voltages and a speed of up to two hundred and fifty thousand operations per second.
And the K536 series was distinguished by its cheap technology, not too high power consumption, but it was not so fast either. On the basis of the K532 kit, sixteen-bit microcomputers ("Elektronika NTs") were immediately released, and K536 became the basis for serial production of the first Soviet universal microcomputers "Electronics S5", also sixteen-bit.
Sectionalist
It was the first Soviet computer! Sectional microprocessors were considered promising, since they made it possible to create computers of any capacity from eight to thirty-two on their basis. At the same time, any command system through microprogram control.
But later, by the end of the eighties, microelectronics rapidly developed its capabilities, and the Soviet computer industry reoriented itself to analogues of foreign computers. Universal sectional processors have been superseded by single-chip models. However, for a long time sectionalists were used, especially in the military industry.
In 1977, the eight-bit single-chip microprocessor K580VM80A was released, which was a complete analogue of the very well-known Intel 8080 model. Such a processor was not supposed to be used for a mainframe computer, it was used in control microcomputers, microcontrollers, peripheral devices and measuring equipment - many places of application. However, it was cheap and simple, and therefore more than one Soviet reader of the Radio magazine designed on its basis home computer.
Its performance was high, the command system was universal, and therefore this microprocessor became one of the most common in the USSR. In addition to a personal computer, many other microprocessor devices were suitable for it, therefore, in the second half of the eighties of the last century, this processor was used in almost hundreds of models of Soviet machines - this is a home computer, and educational, and more than one professional model.
"Electronics-60"
In 1978, a sixteen-bit high-speed microcomputer "Electronics-60" was born. According to the command system, "Electronics-60" was compatible with DEC PDP-11 / LSI-11 - an American computer. Performance - up to a million operations per second. Such machines were used in production, controlled technological processes, installed in CNC machines, and - most importantly - worked long and honestly in science and the military industry.
In 1983, the magazine with a million copies "Radio" published a diagram of an amateur computer "Micro-80" with a K580IK80A processor, which served as the first step towards the mass enthusiasm of radio amateurs for microprocessor and computer technology. At this time, Soviet personal computers were able to work with any tape recorder for storing data and programs, and with any television that served as a monitor.
It was with the help of "Electronics-60" in 1984 that everyone's favorite game "Tetris" was written. Being engaged in speech recognition and other problems of artificial intelligence in the computer center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he often used puzzles in his work to test this or that idea.
Later, this game was rewritten for the IBM PC in the Turbo Pascal programming language, and this was done by a sixteen-year-old Soviet schoolboy, Vadim Gerasimov, who now lives in Australia and works at Google.
First office of informatics
In the eighties, a batch of simple, that is, affordable universal personal computers for home and educational use, was developed and released. It was, of course, the sixteen-bit "Electronics BK-0010", where the abbreviation BK denoted a household computer. At that time, there were no personal computers in the world on sixteen-bit processors.
What is special about her? Specialized microcircuits with a high degree of integration - gate arrays that served as controllers for the display, keyboard, memory and much more. The "Focal" language interpreter was used. High-resolution monochrome graphics or four-color graphics were supported. It was these machines that equipped the first computer science classroom, and their descendants until 1993 served as the main household and educational computers in the Soviet Union.
Akademgorodok
Novosibirsk schoolchildren were involved in the work of the computer center of the Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and with their direct participation software system for schools, and was called - "Schoolgirl" for the personal computer "Agat". She worked with the programming languages "Rapier" and "Robik", included the graphic system "Sword" and a wide variety of training packages.
"Agat" - the brainchild of 1984, is considered the first mass-produced personal computer compatible with Apple II + and was already a serious PC with one hundred and twenty-eight kilobytes of RAM, floppy drives and a color monitor that displayed sixteen colors. It was in 1984 that the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution, after which the computerization of school education began.
Turning year
In 1985, the whole country felt either breakage or restructuring, and this could not but affect the computer sphere. Many iconic models of Soviet computers were developed at that time. Progressive sixteen-bit "Electronics", new DVK models developed quite successfully, Soviet computers compatible with IBM appeared. The three-processor "Istra-4816" - up to four megabytes of RAM, as well as the pocket sixteen-bit microcalculator "Electronics MK-85" are especially characteristic of this time.
But work did not stop on PCs, for which the simplest eight-bit processors served as the basis. So the models "Specialist", "Ocean-240", "Irisha" appeared. Computers were 8-bit. Does this mean they are bad? No. Among the eight-bit models, there were simply wonderful ones, despite the fact that the processor was slightly outdated. For example, "Corvette" - the computer is simply excellent.
Mikrosha and others
The most colorful and vociferous computer among Soviet home personal computers is the eight-bit Vector-06Ts. Again, in 1986, Radio magazine published several schematics for the Radio-86RK microcomputer, and this model was so simple that it instantly gained immense popularity. Analogues and variants appeared, among which there were several that were awarded industrial production. For example, "Mikrosha" is a computer with an affectionate name. "Radio-86RK" was well combined with "Micro-80", hence it appeared.
One of the main PCs for study is the Corvette. The computer was very complex and multifunctional, despite all its eight-bit. The RAM is small - only 257 KB, but for those times it was a chic figure. In addition, color graphics with a fairly high resolution - 512x256 pixels, hardware acceleration, a text video controller, a sound generator - an analogue of the IBM PC, a local network, a mouse, joysticks, a printer, disk drives - all this and much more was originally provided. Just as good was the amateur "Orion-128", also an eight-bit, created by a radio amateur near Moscow Vyacheslav Safronov and his friends. In 1990, their developments were published by the Radio magazine.
Last surge
The mid-eighties was marked by an extraordinary rise in the domestic computer industry, there was a huge number of excellent original ideas. It seemed like a breakthrough! But it was not there. Gorbachev's rapprochement between the USSR and the world economy did not lead the country to flourish. Paradox - the opposite happened. and lost all its progressive achievements.
There was a massive transition to the release of long outdated and simple models - Spectrum-compatible. However, the simplest models compatible with IBM were also produced. But purely Soviet developments ceased altogether by 1992. All manufacturers have switched to a single world standard - the release of personal computers exclusively compatible with IBM.
conclusions
In recent decades, it has been customary to speak negatively about domestic computer technology. Only about the vices of socialism and its planned economy, in which we "lag behind forever", and about the fact that in the West technologies have always been better, and Russians are crooked and cannot do computers.
But all, literally all of the above computers were not at all the best developments. They were just common. In fact, electronics in the USSR developed quite at the world level and in many ways was ahead of the same industry in the West, as our military and space programs can testify to.
At the initial stage of its development, the sphere of computer development in the USSR kept pace with world trends. The history of the development of Soviet computers until 1980 will be discussed in this article.
Prehistory of the computer
In modern colloquial - and scientific too - speech, the expression "electronic computer" is universally changed to the word "computer". This is not entirely true in theory - computer calculations may not be based on the use of electronic devices. However, historically, computers have become the main tool for carrying out operations with large amounts of numerical data. And since only mathematicians worked on their improvement, all types of information began to be encoded by numerical "ciphers", and computers convenient for their processing from scientific and military exotic turned into a universal widespread technique.
The engineering base for the creation of electronic computers was laid in Germany during the Second World War. There, prototypes of modern computers were used for encryption. In Britain, in the same years, a similar decryption machine, Colossus, was designed by the joint efforts of spies and scientists. Formally, neither German nor British devices can be considered electronic computers, rather electronic-mechanical - relay switching and rotation of gear rotors corresponded to operations.
After the end of the war, the development of the Nazis fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and, mainly, the United States. The scientific community that developed at that time was distinguished by a strong dependence on “their” states, but more importantly, a high level of insight and diligence. Leading experts from several areas at once became interested in the possibilities of electronic computing technology. And the governments agreed that devices for fast, accurate and complex calculations are promising, and allocated funds for relevant research. In the United States, before and during the war, their own cybernetic developments were carried out - a non-programmable, but completely electronic (without a mechanical component) Atanasov-Berry computer (ABC), as well as an electromechanical, but ENIAC programmable for various tasks. Their modernization, taking into account the works of European (German and British) scientists, led to the appearance of the first "real" computers. At the same time (in 1947), the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was organized in Kiev, headed by Sergei Lebedev, an electrical engineer and the founder of Soviet computer science. In the same year as the institute was founded, Lebedev opened under its roof a laboratory for modeling and computer technology, in which the best computers of the Union were developed over the next few decades.
ENIAC
Principles of the first generation of computers
In the 40s, the famous mathematician John von Neumann came to the conclusion that computers in which programs are literally set manually by switching levers and wires are too complicated for practical use. It creates the concept that executable codes are stored in memory in the same way as processed data. The separation of the processor part from the data drive and a fundamentally identical approach to storing programs and information became the cornerstones of the von Neumann architecture. This computer architecture is still the most common. It is from the first devices built on the von Neumann architecture that generations of computers are counted.
Simultaneously with the formulation of the postulates of von Neumann architecture in electrical engineering, the mass use of vacuum tubes begins. At that time, only they made it possible to fully realize the automation of calculations offered by the new architecture, since the response time of vacuum tubes is extremely short. However, each lamp required a separate power wire for operation, in addition, the physical process on which the operation of vacuum lamps is based - thermionic emission - imposed restrictions on their miniaturization. As a result, computers of the first generation consumed hundreds of kilowatts of energy and occupied tens of cubic meters of space.
In 1948, Sergei Lebedev, who was engaged in his director's post not only in administrative work, but also in scientific work, submitted a memorandum to the USSR Academy of Sciences. It spoke about the need to develop their own electronic computer as soon as possible, both for the sake of practical use and for the sake of scientific progress. The development of this machine was carried out completely from scratch - Lebedev and his employees had no information about the experiments of Western colleagues. In two years, the machine was designed and installed - for these purposes, near Kiev, in Feofaniya, the institute was given a building that previously belonged to the monastery. In 1950, a computer called (MESM) made the first calculations - finding the roots of a differential equation. In 1951, the inspection of the Academy of Sciences, headed by Keldysh, accepted the MESM into operation. The MESM consisted of 6,000 vacuum tubes, performed 3,000 operations per second, consumed just under 25 kW of power, and occupied 60 square meters. It had a complex three-address command system and read data not only from punched cards, but also from magnetic tapes.
While Lebedev was building his machine in Kiev, Moscow formed its own group of electrical engineers. Electrical engineer Isaac Brook and inventor Bashir Rameev, both employees of the Energy Institute. Krzhizhanovsky, back in 1948 filed an application for registration of the project of their own computer with the patent office. By 1950, Rameev was put in charge of a special laboratory, where literally in a year the M-1 computer was assembled - a computer much less powerful than the MESM (only 20 operations per second were performed), but also smaller in size (about 5 square meters) . 730 lamps consumed 8 kW of energy.
Unlike MESM, which was used mainly for military and industrial purposes, the computational time of the M series was given to both nuclear scientists and the organizers of an experimental chess tournament between computers. In 1952, the M-2 appeared, the productivity of which increased a hundred times, and the number of lamps only doubled. This has been achieved active use control semiconductor diodes. Energy consumption increased to 29 kW, area - up to 22 square meters. Despite the obvious success of the project, they did not launch mass production of computers - this prize went to another cybernetic creation created with the support of Rameev - Strela.
The computer "Strela" was created in Moscow, under the leadership of Yuri Bazilevsky. The first sample of the device was completed by 1953. Like the M-1, Strela used cathode ray tube memory (MESM used trigger cells). "Strela" turned out to be the most successful of these three projects, since they managed to launch it into a series - the Moscow plant of calculating and analytical machines took up the assembly. For three years (1953-1956) seven "Arrows" were released, which then went to Moscow State University, to the computer centers of the USSR Academy of Sciences and several ministries.
In many ways, the Strela was worse than the M-2. It performed the same 2000 operations per second, but it used 6200 lamps and more than 60 thousand diodes, which in total gave 300 square meters of occupied area and about 150 kW of power consumption. M-2 summed up the deadlines: its predecessor did not differ in good performance, and by the time it was put into operation, the finished version of the Strela had already been put into production.
M-3 was again a "stripped down" version - the computer performed 30 operations per second, consisted of 774 lamps and consumed 10 kW of energy. On the other hand, this machine occupied only 3 sq.m., thanks to which it went into mass production (16 computers were assembled). In 1960, the M-3 was modified, the performance was increased to 1000 operations per second. On the basis of M-3 in Yerevan and Minsk, new computers "Aragats", "Razdan", "Minsk" were developed. These "outlying" projects, running in parallel with the leading Moscow and Kiev programs, achieved serious results only later, after the transition to transistor technology.
In 1950, Lebedev was transferred to Moscow, to the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Technology. There, in two years, a computer was designed, the prototype of which at one time was considered MESM. The new machine was called BESM - Large Electronic Computing Machine. This project marked the beginning of the most successful series of Soviet computers.
Modified for another three years, BESM was distinguished by its excellent speed for those times - up to 10 thousand operations per minute. In this case, only 5000 lamps were used, and the power consumption was 35 kW. BESM was the first Soviet computer general profile”- it was originally supposed to be provided to scientists and engineers for their calculations.
BESM-2 was developed for serial production. The number of operations per second was increased to 20 thousand, RAM, after testing CRT, mercury tubes, was implemented on ferrite cores (for the next 20 years, this type of RAM became the leading one). The release began in 1958, and in four years from the conveyors of the plant. Volodarsky got 67 such computers. With BESM-2, the development of military computers began, which controlled the air defense systems - M-40 and M-50. As part of these modifications, the first Soviet computer of the second generation, 5E92b, was assembled, and the further fate of the BESM series was already connected with transistors.
Since 1955, Rameev "relocated" to Penza to develop another computer, a cheaper and mass-produced Ural-1. Consisting of a thousand lamps and consuming up to 10 kW of energy, this computer occupied about a hundred square meters and cost much less than powerful BESMs. "Ural-1" was produced until 1961, a total of 183 computers were produced. They were installed in computer centers and design offices around the world, in particular, in the flight control center of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Ural 2-4 were also vacuum tube computers, but they already used ferrite RAM, performed several thousand operations per second and occupied 200-400 square meters.
At Moscow State University, they developed their own computer - "Setun". It also went into mass production - 46 such computers were produced at the Kazan plant of computers. They were designed by the mathematician Sobolev together with the designer Nikolai Brusentsov. "Setun" - a computer based on ternary logic; in 1959, a few years before the mass transition to transistor computers, this computer with its two dozen vacuum tubes performed 4500 operations per second and consumed 2.5 kW of electricity. For this, ferrite diode cells were used, which the Soviet electrical engineer Lev Gutenmakher tested back in 1954 when developing his LEM-1 lampless electronic computer. "Setuni" successfully functioned in various institutions of the USSR, but the future was for computers that are mutually compatible, and therefore based on the same binary logic. Moreover, the world received transistors that removed vacuum tubes from electrical laboratories.
US first generation computer
Serial production of computers in the United States began earlier than in the USSR - in 1951. It was UNIVAC I, a commercial computer designed more for statistical data processing. Its performance was about the same as that of Soviet developments: 5200 vacuum tubes were used, 1900 operations per second were performed, and 125 kW of energy was consumed.
But scientific and military computers were much more powerful (and larger). The development of the Whirlwind computer began even before the Second World War, and its purpose was nothing less than the training of pilots on flight simulators. Naturally, in the first half of the 20th century, this was an unrealistic task, so the war ended, and the Whirlwind was never built. But then the Cold War began, and the developers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered to return to the grand idea.
In 1953 (the same year that the M-2 and Arrows were released), the Whirlwind was completed. This computer performed 75,000 operations per second and consisted of 50,000 vacuum tubes. Energy consumption reached several megawatts. In the process of creating computers, ferrite data storage devices, RAM on cathode ray tubes, and something like a primitive graphical interface were developed. In practice, the Whirlwind was never useful - it was upgraded to intercept bomber aircraft, and at the time of commissioning, the airspace had already come under the control of intercontinental missiles.
The uselessness of the Whirlwind for the military did not put an end to such computers. The creators of the computer transferred the main developments to IBM. In 1954, on their basis, the IBM 701 was designed - the first serial computer of this corporation, which provided it with leadership in the computer technology market for thirty years. Its characteristics were completely similar to the Whirlwind. Thus, the performance of American computers was higher than that of the Soviet ones, and many constructive solutions were found earlier. True, this concerned rather the use of physical processes and phenomena - architecturally, the computers of the Union were often more perfect. Perhaps because Lebedev and his followers developed the principles of building computers practically from scratch, relying not on old ideas, but on the latest achievements of mathematical science. However, the abundance of uncoordinated projects did not allow the USSR to create its own IBM 701 - the successful features of the architectures were dispersed throughout different models, and funding was just as dispersed.
Principles of the second generation of computers
Computers based on vacuum tubes were distinguished by the complexity of programming, large dimensions, and high power consumption. At the same time, machines often broke down, their repair required the participation of professional electrical engineers, and the correct execution of commands seriously depended on the health of the hardware. It was an extremely difficult task to find out whether the error was caused by the incorrect connection of some element or a “typo” by the programmer.
In 1947, at Bell Laboratories, which provided the United States with a good half of advanced technological solutions in the 20th century, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley invented the bipolar semiconductor transistor. November 15, 1948 in the journal "Bulletin of Information" A.V. Krasilov published an article "Crystal Triode". It was the first publication in the USSR about transistors. was created independently of the work of American scientists.
In addition to reduced power consumption and a faster reaction rate, transistors favorably differed from vacuum tubes in their durability and an order of magnitude smaller dimensions. This made it possible to create computing units by industrial methods (conveyor assembly of vacuum tube computers seemed unlikely due to their size and fragility). At the same time, the problem of dynamic configuration of the computer was solved - it was easy to turn off small peripheral devices and replace them with others, which was not possible in the case of massive lamp components. The cost of a transistor was higher than the cost of a vacuum tube, but with mass production, transistor computers paid off much faster.
The transition to transistor computing in Soviet cybernetics went smoothly - no new design bureaus or series were created, just the old BESMs and Urals were transferred to the new technology.
The fully semiconductor computer 5E92b, designed by Lebedev and Burtsev, was created for the specific tasks of missile defense. It consisted of two processors - a computing processor and a peripheral device controller - had a self-diagnostic system and allowed "hot" replacement of computing transistor units. Performance was 500,000 operations per second for the main processor and 37,000 for the controller. Such a high performance of an additional processor was necessary, since not only traditional input-output systems, but also locators worked in conjunction with a computer. The computer occupied more than 100 square meters. Its design began in 1961 and was completed in 1964.
Already after 5E92b, the developers took up the universal transistor computer - BESMs. BESM-3 remained a model, BESM-4 reached mass production and was produced in the amount of 30 vehicles. It performed up to 40 operations per second and was a "guinea pig" for creating new programming languages that came in handy with the advent of BESM-6.
In the entire history of Soviet computing technology, BESM-6 is considered the most triumphant. At the time of its creation in 1965, this computer was advanced not so much in terms of hardware characteristics as in terms of controllability. It had an advanced self-diagnostic system, several modes of operation, extensive capabilities for managing remote devices (via telephone and telegraph channels), and the ability to process 14 processor commands in a pipeline. The system performance reached one million operations per second. There was support for virtual memory, instruction cache, reading and writing data. In 1975, BESM-6 processed the flight paths of spacecraft participating in the Soyuz-Apollo project. The release of computers continued until 1987, and operation - until 1995.
Since 1964, Urals have also switched to semiconductors. But by that time, the monopoly of these computers had already passed - almost every region produced its own computers. Among them were Ukrainian control computers "Dnepr", performing up to 20,000 operations per second and consuming only 4 kW, Leningrad UM-1, also controlling, and requiring only 0.2 kW of electricity with a capacity of 5,000 operations per second, "Spring" and "Snow", Yerevan "Nairi" and many others. The MIR and MIR-2 computers developed at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics deserve special attention.
These engineering computers began to be mass-produced in 1965. In a sense, the head of the Institute of Cybernetics, Academician Glushkov, was ahead of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with their user interfaces. "MIR" was a computer with an electric typewriter connected to it; it was possible to set commands to the processor in the human-readable programming language ALMIR-65 (for "MIR-2" the high-level language ANALYST was used). Commands were given in both Latin and Cyrillic characters, editing and debugging modes were supported. The output of information was provided in text, tabular and graphical forms. The productivity of MIR was 2000 operations per second, for MIR-2 this figure reached 12000 operations per second, the energy consumption was several kilowatts.
US second generation computers
In the US, computers continued to be developed by IBM. However, this corporation also had a competitor - a small company Control Data Corporation and its developer Seymour Cray. Cray was one of the first to adopt new technologies - first transistors, and then integrated circuits. He also assembled the world's first supercomputers (in particular, the fastest CDC 1604 at the time of its creation, which the USSR tried to acquire for a long time and unsuccessfully) and was the first to use active cooling of processors.
Transistor CDC 1604 appeared on the market in 1960. It was based on germanium transistors, performed more operations than BESM-6, but had worse controllability. However, already in 1964 (a year before the appearance of BESM-6), Cray developed the CDC 6600, a supercomputer with a revolutionary architecture. CPU on silicon transistors, it performed only the simplest commands, all the "conversion" of data passed into the department of ten additional microprocessors. To cool it, Cray used freon circulating in the tubes. As a result, the CDC 6600 became the speed record holder, overtaking the IBM Stretch by three times. In fairness, there was never a “competition” between BESM-6 and CDC 6600, and comparison in terms of the number of operations performed at that level of technology development no longer made sense - too much depended on the architecture and control system.
Principles of the third generation of computers
The advent of vacuum tubes accelerated the execution of operations and made it possible to realize the ideas of von Neumann. The creation of transistors solved the "overall problem" and allowed to reduce power consumption. However, the problem of build quality remained - individual transistors were literally soldered to each other, and this was bad both in terms of mechanical reliability and in terms of electrical insulation. In the early 50s, engineers expressed the idea of integrating individual electronic components, but only by the 60s did the first prototypes of integrated circuits appear.
Computing crystals were not assembled, but grown on special substrates. Electronic components that perform various tasks began to be connected using aluminum plating, and the role of an insulator was assigned to the p-n junction in the transistors themselves. integrated circuits were the fruit of the integration of the same works of at least four engineers - Kilby, Legovets, Noyce and Ernie.
At first, microcircuits were designed according to the same principles as the “routing” of signals inside tube computers was carried out. Then engineers began to apply the so-called transistor-transistor logic (TTL), which more fully used the physical advantages of new solutions.
It was also important to ensure compatibility, hardware and software, of various computers. Particularly much attention was paid to the compatibility of models of the same series - inter-corporate and even more so interstate cooperation was still far away.
The Soviet industry was fully provided with computers, but the variety of projects and series began to create problems. In fact, the universal programmability of computers was limited by their hardware incompatibility - all series had different processor bits, instruction sets, and even byte sizes. In addition, the serial production of computers was very conditional - only the largest computer centers were provided with computers. At the same time, the gap between American engineers was growing - in the 60s, Silicon Valley was already confidently standing out in California, where progressive integrated circuits were being created with might and main.
In 1968, the Ryad directive was adopted, according to which the further development of USSR cybernetics was directed along the path of cloning IBM S / 360 computers. Sergei Lebedev, who at that time remained the country's leading electrical engineer, was skeptical about Ryad - by definition, the path of copying was the path of those who were lagging behind. However, no one saw another way to quickly “pull up” the industry. The Research Center for Electronic Computing Technology was established in Moscow, the main task of which was to implement the Ryad program - the development of a unified series of computers similar to the S / 360. The result of the work of the center was the emergence of ES computers in 1971. Despite the similarity of the idea with the IBM S / 360, Soviet developers did not have direct access to these computers, so the design of computers began with software disassembly and logical architecture based on its operation algorithms.
The development of the ES computer was carried out jointly with specialists from friendly countries, in particular, the GDR. However, attempts to catch up with the US in computer development ended in failure in the 1980s. The reason for the fiasco was both the economic and ideological decline of the USSR and the emergence of the concept of personal computers. The cybernetics of the Union was not ready either technically or ideologically for the transition to individual computers.
The first Soviet electronic computer was designed and put into operation near the city of Kiev. The name of Sergei Lebedev (1902-1974) is associated with the advent of the first computer in the Union and on the territory of continental Europe. In 1997, the scientific world community recognized him as a pioneer of computer technology, and in the same year the International computer society issued a medal with the inscription: “S.A. Lebedev - developer and designer of the first computer in the Soviet Union. The founder of the Soviet computer industry. In total, with the direct participation of the academician, 18 electronic computers were created, 15 of which grew into mass production.
Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev - the founder of computer technology in the USSR
In 1944, after being appointed director of the Energy Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the academician and his family moved to Kiev. Before the creation of a revolutionary development, there are still four long years left. This institute specialized in two areas: electrical and thermal engineering. By a strong-willed decision, the director separates two not quite compatible scientific directions and heads the Institute of Electronics. The laboratory of the Institute moves to the outskirts of Kiev (Feofaniya, a former monastery). It is there that Professor Lebedev's long-standing dream comes true - to create an electronic digital calculating machine.
The first computer of the USSR
In 1948, the model of the first domestic computer was assembled. The device occupied almost the entire space of the room with an area of 60 m 2 . There were so many elements in the structure (especially heating elements) that when the machine was first started, so much heat was released that even part of the roof had to be dismantled. The first model of the Soviet computer was simply called the Small Electronic Computing Machine (MESM). She could perform up to three thousand computational operations per minute, which was sky-high by the standards of that time. In MESM, the principle of an electronic tube system was applied, which has already been tested by Western colleagues (Colossus Mark 1, 1943, ENIAC, 1946).
In total, about 6 thousand different vacuum tubes were used in the MESM, the device required a power of 25 kW. Programming took place by entering data from punched tapes or as a result of typing codes on a plug-in switch. Data output was carried out by means of an electromechanical printer or by photographing.
MESM parameters:
- binary with a fixed point before the most significant digit counting system;
- 17 digits (16 plus one per sign);
- RAM capacity: 31 for numbers and 63 for commands;
- functional unit capacity: similar to RAM;
- three-address command system;
- calculations performed: four simple operations (addition, subtraction, division, multiplication), comparison with sign, shift, comparison by absolute value, addition of commands, transfer of control, transfer of numbers from a magnetic drum, etc.;
- type of ROM: trigger cells with the option of using a magnetic drum;
- data entry system: serial with control through the programming system;
- monoblock universal arithmetic device of parallel action on trigger cells.
Despite the maximum possible offline work MESM, the definition and elimination of problems still occurred manually or through semi-automatic regulation. During the tests, the computer was asked to solve several problems, after which the developers concluded that the machine is capable of performing calculations beyond the control of the human mind. A public demonstration of the capabilities of a small electronic calculating machine took place in 1951. From that moment on, the device is considered to be the first Soviet electronic computer put into operation. Only 12 engineers, 15 technicians and assemblers worked on the creation of MESM under the leadership of Lebedev.
Despite a number of significant limitations, the first computer made in the USSR worked in accordance with the requirements of its time. For this reason, Academician Lebedev's machine was entrusted with carrying out calculations to solve scientific, technical and national economic problems. The experience gained during the development of the machine was used to create the BESM, and the MESM itself was considered as an operating model on which the principles of building a mainframe computer were worked out. Academician Lebedev's first "pancake" on the way to the development of programming and the development of a wide range of issues in computational mathematics did not turn out to be lumpy. The machine was used both for current tasks and was considered a prototype of more advanced devices.
Lebedev's success was highly appreciated in the highest echelons of power, and in 1952 the academician was appointed to the leading position of the institute in Moscow. A small electronic calculating machine, produced in a single copy, was used until 1957, after which the device was dismantled, disassembled into components and placed in the laboratories of the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev, where parts of the MESM served students in laboratory research.
Computer series "M"
While Academician Lebedev was working on an electronic computing device in Kiev, a separate group of electrical engineers was being formed in Moscow. Employees of the Krzhizhanovsky Energy Institute Isaac Brook (electrical engineer) and Bashir Rameev (inventor) in 1948 file an application for registration of their own computer project with the patent office. In the early 50s, Rameev became the head of a separate laboratory, where this device was intended to appear. Literally in one year, the developers assemble the first prototype of the M-1 machine. For all technical parameters it was a device much inferior to the MESM: only 20 operations per second, while the Lebedev machine showed a result of 50 operations. An integral advantage of the M-1 was its size and power consumption. Only 730 electric lamps were used in the design, they required 8 kW, and the entire apparatus occupied only 5 m 2.
In 1952, the M-2 appeared, the productivity of which increased a hundred times, and the number of lamps only doubled. This was achieved through the use of control semiconductor diodes. But innovations required more energy (M-2 consumed 29 kW), and the construction took up four times more space than its predecessor (22 m 2). Counting capabilities this device it was quite enough to implement a number of computational operations, but mass production never began.
"Baby" computer M-2
Model M-3 again became a "baby": 774 electronic lamps, consuming energy in the amount of 10 kW, area - 3 m 2. Accordingly, the computational capabilities have also decreased: 30 operations per second. But this was quite enough to solve many applied problems, so the M-3 was produced in a small batch, 16 pieces.
In 1960, the developers brought the machine's performance up to 1000 operations per second. This technology was borrowed further for electronic computers "Aragats", "Razdan", "Minsk" (produced in Yerevan and Minsk). These projects, implemented in parallel with the leading Moscow and Kiev programs, showed serious results later, during the transition of computers to transistors.
"Arrow"
Under the leadership of Yuri Bazilevsky, the Strela computer is being created in Moscow. The first sample of the device was completed in 1953. "Arrow" (like M-1) contained a memory on cathode ray tubes (MESM used trigger cells). The project of this computer model was so successful that mass production of this type of product began at the Moscow plant of calculating and analytical machines. In just three years, seven copies of the device were assembled: for use in the laboratories of Moscow State University, as well as in the computer centers of the USSR Academy of Sciences and a number of ministries.
Computer "Strela"
"Arrow" performed 2 thousand operations per second. But the device was very massive and consumed 150 kW of energy. The design used 6.2 thousand lamps and more than 60 thousand diodes. "Makhina" occupied an area of 300 m 2.
BESM
After being transferred to Moscow (in 1952), to the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering, Academician Lebedev set to work on the production of a new electronic computing device - the Large Electronic Computing Machine, BESM. Note that the principle of building a new computer was largely borrowed from the early development of Lebedev. The implementation of this project was the beginning of the most successful series of Soviet computers.
BESM has already carried out up to 10,000 calculations per second. In this case, only 5000 lamps were used, and the power consumption was 35 kW. BESM was the first Soviet "wide profile" computer - it was originally supposed to be provided to scientists and engineers for carrying out calculations of varying complexity.
The BESM-2 model was developed for serial production. The number of operations per second was increased to 20 thousand. After testing CRT and mercury tubes, in this model, RAM was already on ferrite cores (the main type of RAM for the next 20 years). Serial production, which began at the Volodarsky plant in 1958, showed results in 67 units of equipment. BESM-2 marked the beginning of the development of military computers that controlled air defense systems: M-40 and M-50. As part of these modifications, the first Soviet computer of the second generation, 5E92b, was assembled, and the further fate of the BESM series was already connected with transistors.
The transition to transistors in Soviet cybernetics went smoothly. There are no particularly unique developments in this period of domestic computer building. Mostly old computer systems refurbished for new technologies.
Large electronic calculating machine (BESM)
The fully semiconductor computer 5E92b, designed by Lebedev and Burtsev, was created for the specific tasks of missile defense. It consisted of two processors (computing and controller of peripheral devices), had a self-diagnostics system and allowed "hot" replacement of computing transistor units. Performance was 500 thousand operations per second for the main processor and 37 thousand for the controller. Such a high performance of an additional processor was necessary, since not only traditional input-output systems, but also locators worked in conjunction with a computer unit. The computer occupied more than 100 m 2 .
Already after 5E92b, the developers returned to BESM again. The main task here is the production of universal computers on transistors. So there were BESM-3 (remained as a layout) and BESM-4. The last model was released in the amount of 30 copies. The computing power of BESM-4 is 40 operations per second. The device was mainly used as a "laboratory sample" for creating new programming languages, as well as a prototype for constructing more advanced models, such as BESM-6.
In the entire history of Soviet cybernetics and computer technology, BESM-6 is considered the most progressive. In 1965 this computer device was the most advanced in terms of manageability: a developed self-diagnostic system, several operating modes, extensive capabilities for managing remote devices, the ability to pipeline processing of 14 processor instructions, virtual memory support, instruction cache, reading and writing data. Computational performance - up to 1 million operations per second. The release of this model continued until 1987, and use - until 1995.
"Kiev"
After Academician Lebedev left for the "Golden-domed", his laboratory, together with the staff, came under the leadership of Academician B.G. Gnedenko (Director of the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR). During this period, a course was taken for new developments. Thus, the idea of creating a computer on vacuum tubes and with memory on magnetic cores was born. He received the name "Kiev". During its development, the principle of simplified programming was first applied - the address language.
In 1956, the former Lebedev laboratory, renamed the Computing Center, was headed by V.M. Glushkov (today this department operates as the Institute of Cybernetics named after Academician Glushkov of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). It was under the leadership of Glushkov that "Kiev" was completed and put into operation. The machine remains in service at the Center, the second sample of the Kiev computer was purchased and assembled at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Moscow region).
Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov
For the first time in the history of the use of computer technology, with the help of "Kiev" it was possible to establish remote control of the technological processes of a metallurgical plant in Dneprodzerzhinsk. Note that the test object was removed from the car by almost 500 kilometers. "Kiev" was involved in a number of experiments on artificial intelligence, machine recognition of simple geometric shapes, modeling automata for recognition of printed and written letters, automatic synthesis functional diagrams. Under the leadership of Glushkov, one of the first relational database management systems (“Autodirector”) was tested on the machine.
Although the basis of the device was the same vacuum tubes, the Kiev already had a ferrite-transformer memory with a volume of 512 words. The device also used an external memory block on magnetic drums with a total volume of nine thousand words. The computing power of this computer model was three hundred times higher than the capabilities of the MESM. The command structure is similar (three-address for 32 operations).
"Kiev" had its own architectural features: the asynchronous principle of transferring control between functional blocks was implemented in the machine; several memory blocks (ferrite random access memory, external memory on magnetic drums); input and output of numbers in the decimal number system; passive storage device with a set of constants and subroutines of elementary functions; advanced system of operations. The device performed group operations with address modification to improve the efficiency of processing complex data structures.
In 1955, Rameev's laboratory moved to Penza to develop another computer called "Ural-1" - a less expensive, hence mass-produced machine. Only 1000 lamps with an energy consumption of 10 kW - this has significantly reduced production costs. "Ural-1" was produced until 1961, a total of 183 computers were assembled. They were installed in computer centers and design offices around the world. For example, in the mission control center of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
"Ural 2-4" was also on vacuum tubes, but already used RAM on ferrite cores, performed several thousand operations per second.
Moscow State University at this time is designing its own computer - "Setun". It also went into mass production. Thus, 46 such computers were produced at the Kazan plant of computers.
"Setun" - an electronic computing device based on ternary logic. In 1959, this computer with its two dozen vacuum tubes performed 4.5 thousand operations per second and consumed 2.5 kW of energy. For this, ferrite-diode cells were used, which the Soviet electrical engineer Lev Gutenmakher tested back in 1954 when developing his lampless electronic computer LEM-1.
"Setuni" functioned safely in various institutions of the USSR. At the same time, the creation of local and global computer networks required maximum compatibility of devices (ie, binary logic). The future of computers lay in transistors, while lamps remained a relic of the past (like mechanical relays once did).
"Setun"
"Dnieper"
At one time, Glushkov was called an innovator; he repeatedly put forward bold theories in the field of mathematics, cybernetics and computer technology. Many of his innovations were supported and implemented during the lifetime of the academician. But time helped to fully appreciate the significant contribution that the scientist made to the development of these areas. With the name of V.M. Glushkov, domestic science connects the historical milestones of the transition from cybernetics to informatics, and then to information technology. The Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (until 1962 - the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR), headed by an outstanding scientist, specialized in improving computer technology, developing applied and system software, industrial production control systems, as well as information processing services in other areas of human activity. The Institute launched large-scale research on the creation of information networks, peripherals and components for them. It can be concluded with confidence that in those years the efforts of scientists were aimed at "conquering" all the main directions of development information technologies. At the same time, any scientifically based theory was immediately put into practice and found its confirmation in practice.
The next step in the domestic computer industry is associated with the appearance of the Dnepr electronic computing device. This apparatus became the first general-purpose semiconductor control computer for the entire Union. It was on the basis of "Dnepr" that attempts were made to mass-produce computer technology in the USSR.
This machine was designed and built in just three years, which was considered a very short time for such a design. In 1961, many Soviet industrial enterprises were re-equipped, and production management fell on the shoulders of computers. Glushkov later tried to explain why they managed to assemble the devices so quickly. It turns out that even at the stage of development and design, the CC closely cooperated with enterprises where computers were supposed to be installed. The features of production, stages were analyzed, and the algorithms of the entire technological process were built. This made it possible to more accurately program the machines, based on the individual industrial characteristics of the enterprise.
Several experiments were carried out with the participation of the Dnepr remote control industries of different specialization: steel, shipbuilding, chemical. Note that in the same period, Western designers designed a semiconductor computer for universal control RW300 similar to the domestic one. Thanks to the design and commissioning of the Dnepr computer, it was possible not only to shorten the distance in the development of computer technology between us and the West, but also to practically step foot in step.
Another achievement belongs to the Dnepr computer: the device was produced and used as the main production and computing equipment for ten years. This (by the standards of computer technology) is quite a significant period, since for most of these developments the stage of modernization and improvement was estimated at five to six years. This computer model was so reliable that it was entrusted with tracking the experimental space flight of the Soyuz-19 and Apollo shuttles, which took place in 1972.
For the first time, domestic computer engineering was exported. Also, a master plan was developed for the construction of a specialized plant for the production of computer hardware - a plant for computers and control machines (VCM), located in Kiev.
And in 1968, a small series of semiconductor computers "Dnepr 2" was released. These computers had a more mass purpose and were used to perform various computing, production and economic planning tasks. But serial production of "Dnepr 2" was soon suspended.
Dnepr met the following technical specifications:
- two-address command system (88 commands);
- binary system reckoning;
- 26 fixed-point binary digits;
- random access memory for 512 words (from one to eight blocks);
- computing power: 20 thousand addition (subtraction) operations per second, 4 thousand multiplication (division) operations at the same time frequencies;
- machine size: 35-40 m 2 ;
- power consumption: 4 kW.
"Promin" and computers of the "MIR" series
1963 becomes a turning point for the domestic computer industry. This year, at the factory for the production of computers in Severodonetsk, the machine "Promin" (from Ukrainian - ray) is being produced. For the first time, memory blocks on metallized cards, stepped microprogram control and a number of other innovations were used in this device. The main purpose of this computer model was considered to be the product of engineering calculations of varying complexity.
Ukrainian computer "Promin" ("Luch")
Behind the "Ray" computers "Promin-M" and "Promin-2" entered mass production:
- RAM: 140 words;
- data input: from metallized punched cards or plug-in input;
- the number of simultaneously memorized commands: 100 (80 - basic and intermediate, 20 - constants);
- unicast command system with 32 operations;
- computing power - 1000 simple tasks per minute, 100 multiplication calculations per minute.
Immediately after the models of the "Promin" series, an electronic computing device appeared with microprogram execution of the simplest computing functions - MIR (1965). Note that in 1967, at the world technical exhibition in London, the MIR-1 machine received a fairly high expert rating. The American company IBM (the world's leading exporter of computer equipment at that time) even purchased several copies.
MIR, MIR-1, and after them the second and third modifications were a truly unsurpassed word of technology of domestic and world production. MIR-2, for example, successfully competed with mainframe computers conventional structure, exceeding it in nominal speed and memory size many times over. On this machine, for the first time in the practice of domestic computer engineering, an interactive mode of operation was implemented using a display with a light pen. Each of these machines was a step forward on the road to building an intelligent machine.
With the advent of this series of devices, a new “machine” programming language, Analyst, was introduced into operation. The alphabet for input consisted of capital Russian and Latin letters, algebraic signs, symbols for highlighting the integer and fractional parts of a number, numbers, exponents of the order of numbers, punctuation marks, and so on. When entering information into the machine, it was possible to use the standard notation for elementary functions. Russian words, for example, "replace", "bit depth", "calculate", "if", "then", "table" and others were used to describe the computational algorithm and designate the form of output information. Any decimal values could be entered in any form. All necessary output parameters were programmed during the task setting period. "Analyst" allowed you to work with integers and arrays, edit entered or already running programs, change the bit depth of calculations by replacing operations.
The symbolic abbreviation MIR was nothing more than an abbreviation for the main purpose of the device: "machine for engineering calculations." These devices are considered to be among the first personal computers.
Technical parameters MIR:
- binary-decimal number system;
- fixed and floating point;
- arbitrary bit depth and length of calculations (the only limitation was the amount of memory - 4096 characters);
- computing power: 1000-2000 operations per second.
Data entry was carried out at the expense of a printing keyboard device (Zoemtron electric typewriter) included in the kit. The components were connected using the microprogram principle. Subsequently, thanks to this principle, it was possible to improve both the programming language itself and other device parameters.
Supercars of the Elbrus series
An outstanding Soviet developer V.S. Burtsev (1927-2005) in the history of domestic cybernetics is considered the chief designer of the first supercomputers and computer systems in the USSR for real-time control systems. He developed the principle of selection and digitization of the radar signal. This made it possible to produce the world's first automatic survey of data from a surveillance radar station for directing fighters to air targets. Successfully conducted experiments on the simultaneous tracking of several targets formed the basis for the creation of automatic targeting systems. Such schemes were built on the basis of the Diana-1 and Diana-2 computing devices, developed under the direction of Burtsev.
Next, a group of scientists developed the principles of construction computing facilities anti-missile defense (ABM), which led to the emergence of precision-guided radar stations. It was a separate high-performance computing complex, allowing with maximum accuracy to produce automatic control for complex, spaced objects online.
In 1972, for the needs of imported air defense systems, the first three-processor computers 5E261 and 5E265 were created, built on a modular basis. Each module (processor, memory, external communications controller) was completely covered by hardware control. This allowed automatic backup data in case there were failures or failures in the operation of individual components. Computing process while not interrupted. The performance of this device was a record for those times - 1 million operations per second with very small dimensions (less than 2 m 3). These complexes in the S-300 system are still used on combat duty.
In 1969, the task was set to develop a computing system with a performance of 100 million operations per second. This is how the project of the multiprocessor computing complex "Elbrus" appears.
The development of machines of "beyond" capabilities had characteristic differences along with the development of universal electronic computing systems. Here, the maximum requirements were imposed both on the architecture and element base, and on the design of the computing system.
In the work on Elbrus and a number of previous developments, the issues of effective implementation of fault tolerance and continuous operation of the system were raised. Therefore, they have such features as multiprocessing and related means of parallelizing task branches.
In 1970, the planned construction of the complex began.
In general, Elbrus is considered a completely original Soviet development. It included such architectural and design solutions, thanks to which the performance of the MVC increased almost linearly with an increase in the number of processors. In 1980, Elbrus-1, with a total capacity of 15 million operations per second, successfully passed state tests.
The Elbrus-1 MVK became the first computer in the Soviet Union built on the basis of TTL microcircuits. Programmatically, its main difference is its focus on high-level languages. For of this type The complexes also created their own operating system, file system and El-76 programming system.
Elbrus-1 provided speed from 1.5 to 10 million operations per second, and Elbrus-2 - more than 100 million operations per second. The second revision of the machine (1985) was a symmetrical multiprocessor computing complex of ten superscalar processors on matrix LSI, which were produced in Zelenograd.
Serial production of machines of such complexity required the urgent deployment of computer design automation systems, and this task was successfully solved under the leadership of G.G. Ryabov.
"Elbrus" generally carried a number of revolutionary innovations: superscalar processor processing, symmetric multiprocessor architecture with shared memory, implementation of secure programming with hardware data types - all these features appeared in domestic machines earlier than in the West. The creation of a unified operating system for multiprocessor systems was led by B.A. Babayan, who at one time was responsible for the development of the BESM-6 system software.
Work on the last machine of the family, Elbrus-3 with a speed of up to 1 billion operations per second and 16 processors, was completed in 1991. But the system turned out to be too cumbersome (due to the element base). Moreover, at that time more cost-effective solutions for the construction of working computer stations appeared.
Instead of a conclusion
The Soviet industry was fully computerized, but a large number of poorly compatible projects and series led to some problems. The main “but” concerned hardware incompatibility, which prevented the creation of universal programming systems: all series had different processor bit sizes, instruction sets, and even byte sizes. Yes, and mass production of Soviet computers can hardly be called (supplies occurred exclusively to computer centers and production). At the same time, the gap between American engineers increased. So, in the 60s, Silicon Valley was already confidently standing out in California, where progressive integrated circuits were being created with might and main.
In 1968, the state directive "Ryad" was adopted, according to which the further development of cybernetics of the USSR was directed along the path of cloning IBM S / 360 computers. Sergei Lebedev, who at that time remained the country's leading electrical engineer, was skeptical about Ryad. In his opinion, the path of copying was, by definition, the path of the laggards. But no one saw another way to quickly “pull up” the industry. The Research Center for Electronic Computing Technology was established in Moscow, the main task of which was the implementation of the Ryad program - the development of a unified series of computers similar to the S / 360.
The result of the work of the center is the appearance in 1971 of computers of the EC series. Despite the similarity of the idea with the IBM S / 360, Soviet developers did not have direct access to these computers, so the design of domestic machines began with software disassembly and logical architecture based on its operation algorithms.
When I started working on this article, for the sake of my own interest, I decided to ask my friends different ages about what they know about the development of computers, technologies, computers, the Internet in the World and the USSR. What I just did not hear; these were the names of Jobs, Gates and Gordon Moore. These were the names of Brin, Zuckerberg, and someone even named the name of Torvalds.
And it became embarrassing. No one mentioned the names of S. A. Lebedev, I. S. Bruk or V. S. Burtsev.
In 1997, the scientific world community recognized S.A. Lebedev as a pioneer of computer technology, and in the same year the International Computer Society issued a medal with the inscription: “S.A. Lebedev - developer and designer of the first computer in the Soviet Union. The founder of the Soviet computer industry. In total, with the direct participation of the academician, 18 electronic computers were created, 15 of which grew into mass production.
Yes, the times of the Iron Curtain and the strictest secrecy did their job. But the scientific community in the USSR can also boast of its achievements in the field of computer engineering.
Schedule for the start of production or operation of Soviet computers:
In this article, we will consider the most interesting achievements of Soviet scientists and inventors.
MESM
In 1944, after being appointed director of the Energy Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Academician Lebedev and his family moved to Kiev. The laboratory of the Institute moves to the outskirts of Kiev (Feofaniya, a former monastery). It is there that Professor Lebedev's long-standing dream comes true - to create an electronic digital calculating machine.
In 1950, a computer called the Small Electronic Computing Machine (MESM) made the first calculations - finding the roots of a differential equation. In 1951, the inspection of the Academy of Sciences, headed by Keldysh, accepted the MESM into operation. The MESM consisted of 6,000 vacuum tubes, performed 3,000 operations per second, consumed just under 25 kW of power, and occupied 60 square meters. It had a complex three-address command system and read data not only from punched cards, but also from magnetic tapes.
Computer "M"
While work on the creation of MESM is in full swing in Kiev, a separate group of electrical engineers is being formed in Moscow. Isaac Brook and Bashir Rameev started work on the “M” type computer. It was noticeably weaker than MESM, but unlike its competitor, it was much smaller and consumed less energy.
In 1960, the developers brought the machine's performance up to 1000 operations per second. This technology was borrowed further for electronic computers "Aragats", "Hrazdan", "Minsk" (produced in Yerevan and). These projects, implemented in parallel with the leading Moscow and Kiev programs, showed serious results later, during the transition of computers to transistors.
BESM
In 1952 Lebedev started work on the Large Electronic Calculating Machine. BESM has already carried out up to 10,000 calculations per second. In this case, only 5000 lamps were used, and the power consumption was 35 kW. BESM was the first Soviet "wide profile" computer - it was originally supposed to be provided to scientists and engineers for carrying out calculations of varying complexity.
DNIEPER
The next step in Soviet computer engineering is associated with the appearance of the Dnepr electronic computing device. This apparatus became the first general-purpose semiconductor control computer for the entire Union. It was on the basis of "Dnepr" that attempts were made to mass-produce computer technology in the USSR.
This machine was designed and built in just three years, which was considered a very short time for such a design.
Dnepr met the following technical specifications:
- two-address command system (88 commands);
- binary number system;
- 26 fixed-point binary digits;
- random access memory for 512 words (from one to eight blocks);
- computing power: 20 thousand addition (subtraction) operations per second, 4 thousand multiplication (division) operations at the same time frequencies;
- machine size: 35-40 m 2 ;
- power consumption: 4 kW.
PEACE
The next generation of MIR computers also had a number of innovations for that time. For example, MIR-1 had 120-bit microcommands, which were recorded on replaceable microprogram matrices. This significantly affected the nature of the use of the machine, as well as the set of arithmetic and logical operations that it performed. MIR-1 had RAM on a ferrite core, external memory was provided by 8-track punched tapes. These computers could not be called super-powerful, but their computing resources (200-300 operations per second) were enough to carry out typical engineering calculations. The consumed energy did not exceed 1.5 kW. The weight was 400 kilograms.
MIR-2 already performed up to 12,000 operations per second, and MIR-3 had capabilities that were 20 times higher than the previous model.
ELBRUS
An outstanding Soviet developer V.S. Burtsev in the history of cybernetics is considered the chief designer of the first supercomputers and computer systems in the USSR for real-time control systems. He developed the principle of selection and digitization of the radar signal. This made it possible to produce the world's first automatic survey of data from a surveillance radar station for directing fighters to air targets.
"" generally carried a number of revolutionary innovations: superscalar processor processing, symmetric multiprocessor architecture with shared memory, implementation of secure programming with hardware data types - all these features appeared in domestic machines earlier than in the West.
But the history of the development of computer engineering in the USSR has invariably led to the fact that at home people will be able to see home-made PCs of domestic production.
MICRO-80
"Micro-80" - Soviet amateur 8-bit microcomputer based on K580IK80A. The idea of the need to familiarize and familiarize radio amateurs of the USSR with the mass use of microcomputers appeared in the early 1980s and was implemented in a series of articles under the general title “To a radio amateur about microprocessors and microcomputers”. Publications began in September 1982 in the popular magazine Radio, which was published in the USSR with a circulation of about 1 million copies. The first articles in the series of publications talked about the architecture of the microprocessor and the principles of building devices on it.
CORVETTE
"Corvette" - 8 bit personal computer. Developed by employees of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Moscow state university. It has been mass-produced since 1988 at the Baku Radio Engineering Production Association, at the Moscow Experimental Computing Center ELEKS GKVTI and at the ENLIN cooperative, at the Kamensk-Ural PO Oktyabr
Initially, the computer was intended to automate the control of the installation for remote measurement of low-temperature plasma parameters by laser spectroscopy, as well as for processing the information received and theoretical calculations, maintaining a data archive and a number of other needs. Development began at the end of 1985.
PC "" was adopted by the Ministry of Education of the USSR as the base for teaching computer science at school. On the basis of the Corvette PC, a complex of educational computer equipment was produced, which included workplace teacher and up to 15 student jobs related to local network. However, mass production of the PC was fraught with a number of difficulties, due to which the computer was “late” and did not receive the expected wide distribution.
ZX SPECTRUM
In the late 80s - early 90s of the last century, computers gained wide popularity in the USSR, which subsequently successfully replicated numerous cooperatives and military enterprises "that got on the rails of conversion." Analogues of the ZX Spectrum had a lot of different names, some of them: Hobby, Lvov, Moscow, Leningrad, Pentagon, Scorpio, Delta, Composite, Sogdiana, "Companion".
The first ZX Spectrum appeared in the USSR in the late 1980s and quickly gained popularity due to its color, musical capabilities and, most importantly, the abundance of games. Most likely they came to the USSR from Poland, at least the first games and documentation came with notes in Polish.
ELECTRONICS MS 1504
Electronics MS 1504 - the first Soviet portable personal computer in the laptop form factor.
Originally named PK-300 and priced at US$550. A small portable computer "T1100 PLUS" from Toshiba was used as a prototype. This is a unique computer that fits in a briefcase, with a full-size keyboard, LCD screen (640x200 pixels), 640 kB RAM, two 3½" floppy disk drives with a capacity of 720 Kb. Installed operating system - MS DOS 3.3. Autonomy of work - 4 hours. An excellent invention !
So if you happened to work on a computer in the USSR, this does not mean at all that you would use a backward and technically imperfect machine. True, it would not be easy to become one of those who had access to computers. But this is a topic for a completely different article.
Complete and comprehensive information about the development of Soviet electronics. Why was Soviet electronics at one time significantly superior to foreign hardware? Which of the Russian scientists embodied Soviet know-how in Intel's microprocessors?
How many critical arrows have been fired in recent years about the state of our computer technology! And that it was hopelessly backward (at the same time, they will definitely screw in about the "organic vices of socialism and planned economy"), and that it is pointless to develop it now, because "we are behind forever." And in almost every case, the reasoning will be accompanied by the conclusion that “Western technology has always been better”, that “Russian computers can’t do it” ...
Usually, when criticizing Soviet computers, attention is focused on their unreliability, difficulty in operation, and low capabilities. Yes, many "experienced" programmers probably remember those "freezing" endlessly "E-ES-ki" of the 70-80s, they can tell about how "Iskra", "Agatha", "Robotrons" looked like, " Electronics" against the backdrop of the IBM PC (not even the latest models) that had just begun to appear in the Union in the late 80s - early 90s, mentioning that such a comparison does not end in favor of domestic computers. And this is so - these models were really inferior to their Western counterparts in terms of their characteristics.
But these listed brands of computers were by no means the best domestic developments, despite the fact that they were the most common. And in fact, Soviet electronics not only developed at the world level, but sometimes even outstripped the similar Western industry!
But why, then, now we use exclusively foreign hardware, and in Soviet time even a hard-to-find domestic computer seemed like a pile of metal compared to its Western counterpart? Is the statement about the superiority of Soviet electronics unfounded?
No, it's not! Why? The answer is in this article.
Glory to our fathers
Apparently, the end of 1948 should be considered the official "date of birth" of Soviet computer technology. It was then that in a secret laboratory in the town of Feofaniya near Kiev, under the leadership of Sergei Alexandrovich Lebedev (at that time - director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and part-time head of the laboratory of the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) work began on the creation of a Small Electronic Computing Machine (MESM) .
Lebedev put forward, substantiated and implemented (regardless of John von Neumann) the principles of a computer with a program stored in memory.
In his first machine, Lebedev implemented the fundamental principles of building computers, such as:
the presence of arithmetic devices, memory, input / output and control devices;
encoding and storing the program in memory, like numbers;
binary number system for encoding numbers and commands;
automatic execution of calculations based on a stored program;
the presence of both arithmetic and logical operations;
hierarchical principle of building memory;
the use of numerical methods for the implementation of calculations.
The design, installation and debugging of the MESM were completed in record time (approximately 2 years) and carried out by only 17 people (12 researchers and 5 technicians). A trial run of the MESM machine took place on November 6, 1950, and regular operation on December 25, 1951.
The first brainchild of S.A. Lebedev - MESM, L.N. Dashevsky and S.B. Pogrebinsky at the control, 1948-1951.
In 1953, a team led by S.A. Lebedev created the first main computer - BESM-1 (from the Big Electronic Computing Machine), released in one copy. It was already created in Moscow, at the Institute of Precision Mechanics (abbreviated as ITM) and the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, of which S.A. Lebedev became the director, and was assembled at the Moscow Plant of Calculating Analytical Machines (abbreviated as CAM).
Lebedev at one of the racks BESM-1
After completing the BESM-1 RAM with an improved element base, its performance reached 10,000 operations per second - at the level of the best in the USA and the best in Europe. In 1958, after another upgrade of the RAM, the BESM, already called BESM-2, was prepared for serial production at one of the Union's factories, which was carried out in the amount of several dozen.
In parallel, work was going on in the Moscow Region Special Design Bureau No. 245, which was led by M.A. Lesechko, also founded in December 1948 by order of I.V. Stalin. In 1950-1953 the team of this design bureau, but already under the leadership of Bazilevsky Yu.Ya. developed a digital general-purpose computer "Strela" with a speed of 2,000 operations per second. This car was produced until 1956, and only 7 copies were made. Thus, "Strela" was the first industrial computer - MESM, BESM existed at that time in only one copy.
Computer "Strela"
In general, the end of 1948 was an extremely productive time for the creators of the first Soviet computers. Despite the fact that both computers mentioned above were among the best in the world, again, in parallel with them, another branch of Soviet computer engineering was developing - M-1, "Automatic digital computer", which was led by I.S. Bruk.
I.S. Brook
M-1 was launched in December 1951 - simultaneously with MESM and for almost two years it was the only operating computer in the USSR (MESM was geographically located in Ukraine, near Kiev).
However, the speed of the M-1 turned out to be extremely low - only 20 operations per second, which, however, did not prevent it from solving problems of nuclear research at the I.V. Kurchatov Institute. At the same time, M-1 took up quite a bit of space - only 9 square meters (compare with 100 sq.m. for BESM-1) and consumed much less energy than Lebedev's brainchild. M-1 became the ancestor of a whole class of "small computers", the supporter of which was its creator I.S.Bruk. Such machines, according to Brook, should have been intended for small design bureaus and scientific organizations that did not have the funds and premises to purchase machines of the BESM type.
The first problem solved on M1
Soon, the M-1 was seriously improved, and its speed reached the level of the "Arrow" - 2 thousand operations per second, at the same time, the size and power consumption increased slightly. New car received the logical name M-2 and was put into operation in 1953. In terms of cost, size and performance, the M-2 became the best Soyuz computer. It was M-2 that won the first international chess tournament between computers.
As a result, in 1953, serious computational problems for the needs of the country's defense, science and the national economy could be solved on three types of computers - BESM, "Strela" and M-2. All these computers are first-generation computers. The elemental base - electron tubes - determined their large dimensions, significant power consumption, low reliability and, as a result, small production volumes and a narrow circle of users, mainly from the world of science. In such machines, there were practically no means of combining the operations of the program being executed and parallelizing the work. various devices; commands were executed one after another, the ALU ("arithmetic logic unit", a unit that directly performs data transformations) was idle in the process of exchanging data with external devices, the set of which was very limited. The BESM-2 operative memory, for example, was 2048 39-bit words; magnetic drums and magnetic tape drives were used as external memory.
Setun is the world's first and only ternary computer. Moscow State University. THE USSR.
Manufacturer: Kazan Plant of Mathematical Machines of the USSR Ministry of Radio Industry. The manufacturer of logic elements is the Astrakhan plant of electronic equipment and electronic appliances Ministry of Radio Industry of the USSR. The manufacturer of magnetic drums is the Penza Computer Plant of the USSR Ministry of Radio Industry. The manufacturer of the printing device is the Moscow Plant of Typewriters of the USSR Ministry of Instrumentation and Industry.
Year of completion of development: 1959.
Release year: 1961.
Year discontinued: 1965.
Number of cars produced: 50.
Nowadays, "Setun" has no analogues, but historically, the development of computer science has gone into the mainstream of binary logic.
But Lebedev's next development, the M-20 computer, was more productive, the serial production of which began in 1959.
The number 20 in the name means speed - 20 thousand operations per second, the amount of RAM is twice as large as the OP BESM, some combination of executed commands was also provided. At that time, it was one of the most powerful and reliable machines in the world, and many of the most important theoretical and applied problems of science and technology of that time were solved on it. In the M20 machine, the possibilities of writing programs in mnemonic codes were implemented. This greatly expanded the circle of specialists who were able to take advantage of computer technology. Ironically, exactly 20 M-20 computers were produced.
The first generation computers were produced in the USSR for quite a long time. Even in 1964, the Ural-4 computer, which served for economic calculations, was still being produced in Penza.
"Ural-1"
Victorious tread
In 1948, the semiconductor transistor was invented in the USA, which began to be used as the element base of a computer. This made it possible to develop a computer with significantly smaller dimensions, power consumption, with a significantly higher (compared to lamp computers) reliability and performance. The task of automating programming has become extremely urgent, as the gap between the time for developing programs and the time for the actual calculation has increased.
The second stage in the development of computer technology in the late 50s - early 60s is characterized by the creation of advanced programming languages (Algol, Fortran, Kobol) and the development of the process of automating task flow control using the computer itself, that is, the development of operating systems. The first operating systems automated the user's work on completing a task, and then tools were created for entering several tasks at once (a batch of tasks) and distributing computing resources between them. There was a multiprogram mode of data processing. The most characteristic features of these computers, commonly called "computers of the second generation":
combining I / O operations with calculations in the central processor;
increase in the amount of RAM and external memory;
use of alphanumeric devices for data input/output;
"closed" mode for users: the programmer was no longer allowed into the computer room, but handed over the program in the algorithmic language (high-level language) to the operator for its further passage on the machine.
In the late 1950s, mass production of transistors was also launched in the USSR.
Domestic transistors(1956)
This made it possible to start creating computers of the second generation with higher performance, but smaller footprint and power consumption. The development of computer technology in the Soviet Union went almost at an "explosive" pace: in short term number various models Computers put into development began to number in dozens: this is the M-220 - the successor of the Lebedev M-20, and "Minsk-2" with subsequent versions, and the Yerevan "Nairi", and a lot of military computers - M-40 with a speed of 40 thousand operations per second and M-50 (which still had lamp components). It was thanks to the latter that in 1961 it was possible to create a fully operational missile defense system (during tests, it was repeatedly possible to shoot down real ballistic missiles with a direct hit on a warhead with a volume of half a cubic meter). But first of all, I would like to mention the BESM series, developed by the team of developers of ITM and CT of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the general supervision of S.A. Lebedev, whose peak of work was the BESM-6 computer created in 1967. It was the first Soviet computer to achieve a speed of 1 million operations per second (an indicator surpassed by domestic computers of subsequent releases only in the early 80s with a significantly lower operational reliability than that of BESM-6).
BESM-6
In addition to high speed (the best indicator in Europe and one of the best in the world), the structural organization of BESM-6 was distinguished by a number of features that were revolutionary for its time and anticipated the architectural features of next-generation computers (the element base of which was integrated circuits). So, for the first time in domestic practice and completely independently of foreign computers, the principle of combining instruction execution was widely used (up to 14 machine instructions could simultaneously be in the processor at different stages of execution). This principle, named by Academician S.A. Lebedev, the chief designer of BESM-6, as the "water pipeline" principle, later became widely used to increase the performance of mainframe computers, having received the name "command pipeline" in modern terminology.
BESM-6 was mass-produced at the Moscow CAM plant from 1968 to 1987 (a total of 355 vehicles were produced) - a kind of record! The last BESM-6 was already dismantled today - in 1995 at the Moscow Mil helicopter plant. BESM-6 was equipped with the largest academic (for example, the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) and industry (Central Institute of Aviation Engineering - CIAM) research institutes, factories and design bureaus.
In this regard, an article by the curator of the Museum of Computing Technology in the UK, Doron Sweid, about how he bought one of the last working BESM-6 in Novosibirsk, is interesting. The title of the article speaks for itself: "The Russian BESM series of supercomputers, developed more than 40 years ago, may testify to the lies of the United States, which declared technological superiority during the years of the Cold War."
Information for specialists
The operation of the RAM modules, the control device and the arithmetic logic unit in BESM-6 was carried out in parallel and asynchronously, due to the presence of buffer devices for intermediate storage of commands and data. To speed up the pipeline execution of commands, the control device was provided with a separate register memory for storing indexes, a separate address arithmetic module that provides fast modification of addresses using index registers, including the stack access mode.
Associative memory on fast registers (such as cache) made it possible to automatically store the most frequently used operands in it and thereby reduce the number of accesses to RAM. The "stratification" of the RAM provided the possibility of simultaneous access to its different modules from different devices cars. The mechanisms of interruption, memory protection, conversion of virtual addresses into physical and privileged operating modes for the OS made it possible to use BESM-6 in multiprogram mode and time sharing mode. The arithmetic logic unit implemented accelerated multiplication and division algorithms (multiplying by four digits of a multiplier, calculating four digits of a quotient in one clock cycle), as well as an adder without end-to-end transfer circuits, representing the result of the operation in the form of a two-row code (bitwise sums and transfers) and operating with an input three-row code (a new operand and a two-row result of the previous operation).
The BESM-6 computer had RAM on ferrite cores - 32 Kb of 50-bit words, the amount of RAM increased with subsequent modifications up to 128 Kb.
Data exchange with external memory on magnetic drums (later on magnetic disks) and magnetic tapes was carried out in parallel through seven high-speed channels (the prototype of future selector channels). Work with other peripheral devices (element-by-element data input/output) was carried out by the operating system driver programs when the corresponding device interrupts occurred.
Technical and operational characteristics:
Medium speed - up to 1 million unicast commands / s
The length of the word is 48 bits and two check bits (the parity of the entire word should have been "odd". Thus, it was possible to distinguish commands from data - for some, the parity of half-words was "even-odd", while others had "odd-even" ". Switching to data or overwriting the code was caught elementarily as soon as an attempt was made to execute a word with data)
Number representation - floating point
Operating frequency - 10 MHz
Occupied area - 150-200 sq. m
Power consumption from mains 220 V/50 Hz — 30 kW (without air cooling system)
The use of these elements in combination with original structural solutions made it possible to provide a performance level of up to 1 million operations per second when operating in a 48-bit floating-point mode, which is a record in relation to a relatively small number of semiconductor elements and their speed (about 60,000 operations per second). transistors and 180 thousand diodes and a frequency of 10 MHz).
The BESM-6 architecture is characterized by an optimal set of arithmetic and logical operations, fast address modification using index registers (including the stack access mode), and a mechanism for expanding the operation code (extra codes).
When creating BESM-6, the basic principles of the computer design automation system (CAD) were laid. Compact notation of machine diagrams by formulas boolean algebra was the basis of its operational and commissioning documentation. Documentation for installation was issued to the plant in the form of tables obtained on a tool computer.
The creators of BESM-6 were V.A. Melnikov, L.N. Korolev, V.S. Petrov, L.A. Teplitsky - leaders; A. A. Sokolov, V. N. Laut, M. V. Tyapkin, V. L. Lee, L. A. Zak, V. I. Smirnov, A. S. Fedorov, O. K. Shcherbakov, A. V. Avaev, V. Ya. Alekseev, O. A. Bolshakov, V. F. Zhirov, V. A. Zhukovsky, Yu. I. Mitropolsky, Yu. .A.Lebedev.
In 1966, an anti-missile defense system was deployed over Moscow based on the computer 5E92b created by the groups of S.A. Lebedev and his colleague V.S. with the reduction of the Strategic Missile Forces).
A material base was also created for the deployment of missile defense over the entire territory of the Soviet Union, but subsequently, according to the terms of the ABM-1 treaty, work in this direction was curtailed. The group of V.S. Burtsev took an active part in the development of the legendary S-300 anti-aircraft anti-aircraft complex, creating in 1968 for it the 5E26 computer, which was distinguished by its small size (2 cubic meters) and the most thorough hardware control that tracked any incorrect information. The performance of the 5E26 computer was equal to that of the BESM-6 - 1 million operations per second.
5E261 is the first mobile multiprocessor high-performance control system in the USSR.
Betrayal
Probably the most stellar period in the history of Soviet computer technology was the mid-sixties. In the USSR at that time there were many creative teams. The institutes of S.A. Lebedev, I.S. Bruk, V.M. Glushkov are only the largest of them. Sometimes they compete, sometimes they complement each other. Simultaneously released many various types machines, most often incompatible with each other (with the exception of machines developed at the same institute), of the most diverse purpose. All of them were designed and made at the world level and were not inferior to their Western competitors.
The variety of produced computers and their incompatibility with each other at the software and hardware levels did not satisfy their creators. It was necessary to put some order in the whole variety of manufactured computers, for example, taking one of them as a certain standard. But...
At the end of the 60s, the country's leadership made a decision that, as the course of further events showed, had catastrophic consequences: to replace all different-sized domestic developments of the middle class (there were about half a dozen of them - "Minski", "Urals", different versions of the M-20 architecture etc.) - to the Unified Family of Computers based on the IBM 360 architecture - the American analogue. At the level of the Ministry of Instrumentation, a similar decision regarding mini-computers was not so loudly made. Then, in the second half of the 70s, the PDP-11 architecture, also of the foreign company DEC, was approved as the general line for mini- and micro-computers. As a result, manufacturers of domestic computers were forced to copy obsolete samples of IBM computer technology. It was the beginning of the end.
Here is the assessment of the Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Artashesovich Babayan:
"Then came the second period, when VNIITSEVT was organized. I believe that this is a critical stage in the development of domestic computer technology. All creative teams were disbanded, competitive developments were closed, and a decision was made to drive everyone into one" stall ". From now on, everyone had to copy American technology , and by no means the most perfect. The giant VNIITSEVT team copied IBM, and the INEUM team copied DEC.
In no way should one think that the teams of developers of the ES computers did their job badly. On the contrary, by creating fully functional computers (albeit not very reliable and powerful), similar to Western counterparts, they coped with this task brilliantly, given that the production base in the USSR lagged behind the Western one. It was the orientation of the entire industry towards "imitation of the West", and not towards the development of original technologies, that was erroneous.
Unfortunately, it is now unknown who exactly in the country's leadership made the criminal decision to curtail original domestic developments and develop electronics in the direction of copying Western analogues. There were no objective reasons for such a decision.
One way or another, but since the beginning of the 70s, the development of small and medium-sized computer equipment in the USSR began to degrade. Instead of further development As a result of the developed and tested concepts of computer engineering, the huge forces of the country's computer technology institutes began to engage in "stupid", and, moreover, semi-legal copying of Western computers. However, it could not be legal - there was a "cold war", and export modern technologies"computer building" in the USSR in most Western countries was simply prohibited by law.
Here is another testimony of B.A. Babayan:
"The calculation was that it would be possible to steal a lot of software - and the flowering of computing technology would come. This, of course, did not happen. Because after everyone was driven into one place, creativity ended. Figuratively speaking, the brains began to dry out from completely uncreative work. You just had to guess how Western, actually obsolete, computers were made. The advanced level was not known, advanced developments were not engaged, there was a hope that software would pour in ... It soon became clear that software did not pour in, stolen pieces "They didn't fit together, the programs didn't work. Everything had to be rewritten, and what they got was ancient and didn't work well. It was a resounding failure. The machines that were made during this period were worse than the machines developed before the organization of VNIITSEVT. .."
Most importantly, the path of copying overseas solutions turned out to be much more difficult than previously thought. For the compatibility of architectures, compatibility at the level of the element base was required, but we did not have it. At that time, the domestic electronics industry was also forced to take the path of cloning American components in order to provide the possibility of creating analogues of Western computers. But it was very difficult.
It was possible to get and copy the topology of microcircuits, to find out all the parameters of electronic circuits. However, this did not answer the main question - how to make them. According to one of the experts of the Russian Ministry of Energy, who worked at one time CEO large NGO, the American advantage has always been huge investment in electronic engineering. In the USA, not so much the technological lines for the production of electronic components were and remain top secret, but the equipment for the creation of these same lines. The result of this situation was that the Soviet microcircuits created in the early 70s - analogues of Western ones - were similar to the American-Japanese in functional terms, but did not reach them in terms of technical parameters. Therefore, boards assembled according to American topologies, but with our components, turned out to be inoperable. I had to develop my own circuit solutions.
Sweid's article cited above concludes: "BESM-6 was, according to general opinion, the last original Russian computer that was designed on a par with its Western counterpart". This is not entirely true: after BESM-6 there was a series of "Elbrus": the first of the machines of this series "Elbrus-B" was a microelectronic copy of BESM-6, provided the opportunity to work in the BESM-6 command system and use software written for her.
However, the general meaning of the conclusion is correct: due to the order of incompetent or deliberately harmful figures of the ruling elite of the Soviet Union of that time, the path to the top of the world Olympus was closed to Soviet computer technology. Which she could well achieve - the scientific, creative and material potential quite allowed her to do this.
Here, for example, some of the personal impressions of one of the authors of the article:
"During my work at CIAM (1983 - 1986), subcontractors - factories and design bureaus of the aviation industry - were already switching to EU equipment. In this regard, the management of the institute began to force the heads of departments to switch to the newly installed EU-1060 at the institute - a clone of the Western IBM PC. The developers staged a sabotage of this solution, passive, and some active, preferring to use the good old BESM-6 fifteen years ago. The fact is that it was almost impossible to work on the EU-1060 in the daytime - constant " freezes", the speed of completing tasks is extremely slow; at the same time, any freeze of BESM-6 was considered as an emergency, they were so rare."
However, by no means all original domestic developments were curtailed. As already mentioned, the team of V.S.Burtsev continued to work on a series of computers "Elbrus", and in 1980 the computer "Elbrus-1" with a speed of up to 15 million operations per second was put into mass production. Symmetrical multiprocessor architecture with shared memory, implementation of secure programming with hardware data types, superscalar processor processing, a single operating system for multiprocessor complexes - all these features implemented in the Elbrus series appeared earlier than in the West. In 1985, the next model in this series, Elbrus-2, was already performing 125 million operations per second. "Elbrus" worked in a number of important systems related to the processing of radar information, they were counted in the license plates of Arzamas and Chelyabinsk, and many computers of this model still provide the functioning of anti-missile defense systems and space forces.
A very interesting feature of the Elbrus was the fact that the system software for them was created in a high-level language - El-76, and not in traditional assembler. Before execution, El-76 code was translated into machine instructions using hardware rather than software.
Since 1990, Elbrus 3-1 has also been produced, which was distinguished by its modular design and was intended for solving large scientific and economic problems, including modeling physical processes. Its performance has reached 500 million operations per second (on some commands). In total, 4 copies of this machine were produced.
Since 1975, the group of I.V. Prangishvili and V.V. Rezanov in the research and production association "Impulse" began to develop the computer complex PS-2000 with a speed of 200 million operations per second, put into production in 1980 and used mainly for geophysical data processing, — search for new mineral deposits. In this complex, the possibilities of parallel execution of program commands were used to the maximum, which was achieved by an ingeniously designed architecture.
Large Soviet computers, like the same PS-2000, in many respects even surpassed their foreign competitors, but were much cheaper - for example, only 10 million rubles were spent on the development of the PS-2000 (and its use made it possible to make a profit of 200 million rubles). However, their scope was "large-scale" tasks - the same missile defense or space data processing. The development of medium and small computers in the Union was seriously and permanently hampered by the betrayal of the Kremlin elite. And that is why the device that is on your table and which is described in our magazine is made in Southeast Asia, and not in Russia.
Catastrophe
Since 1991, hard times have come for Russian science. The new government of Russia has set a course for the destruction of Russian science and original technologies. The financing of the overwhelming majority of scientific projects ceased, as a result of the destruction of the Union, the interconnections of computer manufacturing plants that ended up in different states were interrupted, and efficient production became impossible. Many developers of domestic computer technology were forced to work outside their specialty, losing their skills and time. The only copy of the Elbrus-3 computer developed back in Soviet times, twice as fast as the most productive American supermachine of that time Cray Y-MP, was dismantled and put under pressure in 1994.
"Elbrus-3"
Some of the creators of Soviet computers went abroad. So, at present, the leading developer of microprocessors from Intel is Vladimir Pentkovsky, who was educated in the USSR and worked at ITMiVT - the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering named after S.A. Lebedev. Pentkovsky took part in the development of the Elbrus-1 and Elbrus-2 computers mentioned above, and then led the development of the Elbrus-3 processor - El-90. As a result of the deliberate policy of destroying Russian science, pursued by the ruling circles of the Russian Federation under the influence of the West, the financing of the Elbrus project ceased, and Vladimir Pentkovsky was forced to emigrate to the United States and get a job at Intel Corporation. He soon became the chief engineer of the corporation, and under his leadership in 1993, Intel developed the Pentium processor, rumored to be named after Pentkovsky.
Pentkovsky embodied in Intel's processors those Soviet know-hows that he himself knew, thinking a lot in the development process, and by 1995 Intel released a more advanced Pentium Pro processor, which was already very close in its capabilities to the 1990 Russian microprocessor El- Pentkovsky is currently developing the next generation of Intel processors, so the processor on which your computer may be running was made by our compatriot and could have been Russian-made if not for the events after 1991.
Many research institutes switched to the creation of large computing systems based on imported components. Thus, in the Research Institute “Kvant” under the leadership of V.K. Levin, the MVS-100 and MVS-1000 computer systems based on the Alpha 21164 processors (manufactured by DEC-Compaq) are being developed. However, the acquisition of such equipment is hampered by the current embargo on the export of high technologies to Russia, and the possibility of using such complexes in defense systems is extremely doubtful - no one knows how many “bugs” can be found in them that activate on a signal and disable the system.
In the personal computer market, domestic computers are completely absent. The maximum that Russian developers go to is assembling computers from components and creating separate devices, for example, motherboards, - again from ready-made components, while placing orders for production at factories in Southeast Asia. However, there are very few such developments (we can name the firms "Aquarius", "Formosa"). The development of the "EC" line has practically stopped - why create your own analogues when it is easier and cheaper to buy originals?
Of course, all is not yet lost. There are also descriptions of technologies, sometimes even
after ten years surpassing Western and current models. Fortunately, not all developers of domestic computer technology went abroad or died. So there is still a chance.
Whether it will be implemented depends on us.
Vladimir Sosnovsky, Anton Orlov
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