1.
IBM mainframe
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IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, the mainframe computer was almost synonymous with IBM products due to their marketshare. Current mainframes in IBMs line of computers are developments of the basic design of the IBM System/360. From 1952 into the late 1960s, IBM manufactured and marketed several large computer models, the first-generation 700s were based on vacuum tubes, while the later, second-generation 7000s used transistors. These machines established IBMs dominance in electronic data processing, IBM had two model categories, one for engineering and scientific use, and one for commercial or data processing use. The two categories, scientific and commercial, generally used common peripherals but had completely different instruction sets, IBM initially sold its computers without any software, expecting customers to write their own, programs were manually initiated, one at a time. Later, IBM provided compilers for the newly developed higher-level programming languages Fortran, the first operating systems for IBM computers were written by IBM customers who did not wish to have their very expensive machines sitting idle while operators set up jobs manually. These first operating systems were essentially scheduled work queues and it is generally thought that the first operating system used for real work was GM-NAA I/O, produced by General Motors Research division in 1956. IBM enhanced one of GM-NAA I/Os successors, the SHARE Operating System, the second generation products were a mainstay of IBMs business and IBM continued to make them for several years after the introduction of the System/360. Prior to System/360, IBM also sold computers smaller in scale that were not considered mainframes, though they were still bulky, the 7010 was introduced in 1962 as a mainframe-sized 1410. The later Systems 360 and 370 could emulate the 1400 machines, a desk size machine with a different instruction set, the IBM1130, was released concurrently with the System/360 to address the niche occupied by the 1620. It used the same EBCDIC character encoding as the 360 and was programmed in Fortran. Midrange computer is a used by IBM for a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframes and microcomputers. All that changed with the announcement of the System/360 in April,1964, the System/360 was a single series of compatible models for both commercial and scientific use. The number 360 suggested a 360 degree, or all-around computer system, System/360 incorporated features which had previously been present on only either the commercial line or the engineering and scientific line. Some of the units and addressing features were optional on some models of the System/360. However, models were compatible and most were also downward compatible. The System/360 was also the first computer in use to include dedicated hardware provisions for the use of operating systems
2.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
3.
Midrange computer
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Midrange computers, or midrange systems, are a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframe computers and microcomputers. These were widely used in science and research as well as for business, midrange systems are primarily high-end network servers and other types of servers that can handle the large-scale processing of many business applications. Although not as powerful as mainframe computers, they are costly to buy, operate. Midrange systems have become popular as powerful network servers to manage large Internet Web sites, corporate intranets and extranets. Today, midrange systems include servers used in industrial process-control and manufacturing plants and they can also take the form of powerful technical workstations for computer-aided design and other computation and graphics-intensive applications. Midrange system are used as front-end servers to assist mainframe computers in telecommunications processing. IBM mainframe Superminicomputer Minicomputer Microcomputer List of IBM products
4.
Punched card
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A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. The information might be data for data processing applications or, in earlier examples, the terms IBM card, or Hollerith card specifically refer to punched cards used in semiautomatic data processing. Many early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, while punched cards are now obsolete as a recording medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still use punched cards to record votes. Basile Bouchon developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725, in 1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated a mechanism to automate loom operation. A number of punched cards were linked into a chain of any length, each card held the instructions for shedding and selecting the shuttle for a single pass. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware, semen Korsakov was reputedly the first to use the punched cards in informatics for information store and search. Korsakov announced his new method and machines in September 1832, rather than seeking patents, charles Babbage proposed the use of Number Cards, pierced with certain holes and stand opposite levers connected with a set of figure wheels. Advanced they push in those levers opposite to which there are no holes on the card, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a medium that could then be read by a machine. Prior uses of machine readable media, such as those above, had been for control, after some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards. Developing punched card data processing technology for the 1890 US census, other companies entering the punched card business included the Powers Accounting Machine Company, Remington Rand, and Groupe Bull. Both IBM and Remington Rand tied punched card purchases to machine leases, in 1932, the US government took both to court on this issue. IBM viewed its business as providing a service and that the cards were part of the machine, IBM fought all the way to the Supreme Court and lost in 1936, the court ruling that IBM could only set card specifications. According to the IBM Archives, By 1937, IBM had 32 presses at work in Endicott, N. Y. printing, cutting and stacking five to 10 million punched cards every day. Punched cards were used as legal documents, such as U. S. Government checks. Punched card technology developed into a tool for business data-processing. By 1950 punched cards had become ubiquitous in industry and government, do not fold, spindle or mutilate, a generalized version of the warning that appeared on some punched cards, became a motto for the post-World War II era. In 1955 IBM signed a consent decree requiring, amongst other things, tom Watson Jr. s decision to sign this decree, where IBM saw the punched card provisions as the most significant point, completed the transfer of power to him from Thomas Watson, Sr. The UNITYPER introduced magnetic tape for data entry in the 1950s, during the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became available
5.
Computer peripheral
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A peripheral is an ancillary device used to put information into and get information out of the computer. Touchscreens are an example that combines different devices into a hardware component that can be used both as an input and output device. A peripheral device is defined as any auxiliary device such as a computer mouse or keyboard that connects to. Other examples of peripherals are image scanners, tape drives, microphones, loudspeakers, webcams, common input peripherals include keyboards, computer mice, graphic tablets, touchscreens, barcode readers, image scanners, microphones, webcams, game controllers, light pens, and digital cameras. Common output peripherals include computer displays, printers, projectors, computer hardware Controller Display device Expansion card Punched card input/output Punched tape Video game accessory
6.
Fujitsu-Siemens
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers GmbH was a Japanese and German vendor of Information technology. The company was founded in 1999 as a 50/50 joint venture between Fujitsu Limited of Japan and Siemens of Germany, on April 1,2009, the company became Fujitsu Technology Solutions as a result of Fujitsu buying out Siemens share of the company. The offerings of Fujitsu Siemens Computers extended from handheld and notebook PCs through desktops, server and storage, to IT data center products and services. Fujitsu Siemens Computers placed a focus on green computers, and was considered a leader or innovator in Green IT, across ecological and environmental markings such as Energy Star, Fujitsu Siemens sponsored McLaren Mercedes Formula-1 team in 1999 and 2000. In 1991, Nokia Data was sold to the British International Computers Limited, later ICL was absorbed by Fujitsu. The Nokia MikroMikko line of desktop computers continued to be produced at the Kilo factories in Espoo. Components, including motherboards and Ethernet network adapters were manufactured locally, internationally the MikroMikko line was marketed by Fujitsu as the ErgoPro. Also on the Fujitsu side, the company fully acquired Amdahl corporation in 1997 which was a manufacturer of IBM compatible mainframes, the mainframe market was an area where Siemens also had a strong presence in, especially in Europe. The mainframe strategy of Siemens was different however as it produced its own line of mainframes that were not IBM compatible, before the acquisition of Amdahl, Fujitsu also already had its own division that produced IBM compatible mainframes so the Amdahl acquisition was part of a market consolidation effort. The German half of the company, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme, was the result of the merger of Nixdorf Computer with Siemens data, in 2003, the company won the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for their use of information technology in an industry-transforming way. It was announced in November 2008 that Fujitsu would buy out Siemens stake in the joint venture for approximately €450m with effect from April 1,2009, Fujitsu Siemens was the last major Japanese/European computer manufacturer. The Fujitsu takeover went ahead as planned on April 1, 2009—with the company renamed as Fujitsu Technology Solutions
7.
BS2000
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BS2000 is a mainframe computer operating system developed in the 1970s by Siemens and from early 2000s onward by Fujitsu Technology Solutions. This uniformity of the interface and the entire BS2000 software configuration makes administration and automation particularly easy. Its mainly used in Germany with a share of 83%, United Kingdom, Belgium and it was an early operating systems which used virtual addressing and a segregated address space for the programs of different users. The same operating system was sold to Sperry Univac when it bought most of RCAs computer division. Univacs fork of TSOS would become VS/9, which used many of the same concepts and this first version supported disk paging and three different operating modes in the same system, interactive dialog, batch, and transaction mode, a precursor of online transaction processing. In 1977 the TRANSDATA communication system used computer networking, the 1978 multiprocessor technology was introduced. The operating system had the ability to cope with a processor failure, at the same time the new technology considerably extended the performance range of the system. In 1979 a transaction processing monitor, the Universal Transaction Monitor, was introduced, in 1980 Siemens introduced the system 7.500 hardware family, ranging from desk size models for use in office environments to large models with water cooling. In 1987 BS2000 V9.0 was ported to the /370 architecture supported 2GB address spaces,512 processes, BS2000 was subdivided into subsystems decoupled from one another. With the advent of the VM2000 virtual machine in 1990, multiple BS2000 systems, of the same or different versions, the hierarchical storage management system HSMS swapped out infrequently used data to cheaper storage media. When the data is needed again, it is restored to high-speed access media, the MAREN tape archiving system supported robot systems. In 1991 the Security evaluation to F2/Q3 was completed, from 1992 through 1995 BS2000/OSD V1.0 was made open to application software and was renamed BS2000/OSD. Full support of the XPG4 standard was achieved in 1995 after the porting of the POSIX interfaces in 1992, in 1996 BS2000/OSD was ported to the MIPS architecture. In 1997 WebTransactions allowed applications to use the Internet, in 1999 BS2000/OSD was the first operating system to be awarded Internet Branding by The Open Group. In 2002 BS2000/OSD was ported to the SPARC architecture, leading to the Fujitsu Siemens Computers’ SX server line, in 2004 support for storage area networks based on Fibre Channel technology was introduced. In 2005 the mainframe system celebrates its 30th anniversary in July, in 2006, BS2000/OSD V7.0 introduced support for new server generations, Unicode support, and improved SAN integration. In 2007 BS2000/OSD version 7.0 was released and this included snap and clone functionality of the EMC Symmetrix DMX storage systems for BS2000 files and disks, online provisioning of disks, and dynamic priority control of I/O. In 2008 BS2000/OSD was ported to the x86 architecture, and the SQ server line was introduced, in 2012 BS2000/OSD version 9.0 was released
8.
SDS Sigma series
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The SDS Sigma series is a series of computers that were introduced by Scientific Data Systems in 1966. The first machines in the series are the 16-bit Sigma 2 and the 32-bit Sigma 7, at the time the only competition for the Sigma 7 was the IBM360. Memory size increments for all SDS/XDS/Xerox computers are stated in kWords, for example, the Sigma 5 base memory is 16K 32-Bit words. Maximum memory is limited by the length of the address field of 17 bits. Although this is an amount of memory in todays technology, Sigma systems performed their tasks exceptionally well, and few were deployed with, or needed. The Xerox 500 series computers, introduced starting in 1973, are compatible upgrades to the Sigma systems using newer technology, in 1975 Xerox sold its computer business to Honeywell, Inc. which continued support for the Sigma line for a time. The Sigma 9 may hold the record for the longest lifetime of a machine selling near the retail price. Sigmas 9s were still in service in 1993, in 2011 the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington acquired a Sigma 9 from a service bureau and has made it operational. That Sigma 9 CPU was at the University of Southern Mississippi until Nov.1985 when Andrews University purchased it, in Feb.1990 Andrews University via Keith Calkins sold and delivered it to Applied Esoterics in Flagstaff. Keith Calkins made the Sigma 9 functional for the museum in 2012/13, the various other system components came from various other user sites, such as Marquette, Samford, Xerox/Dallas. Bits 1-7 contain the operation code Bits 8-11 encode a register operand Bits 12-14 encode an index register, Bits 16-31 encode the address of a memory word. Sigma systems provided a range of performance, roughly doubling from Sigma 5, the slowest, to Sigma 9 Model 3, the fastest. For example, 32-bit fixed point multiply times ranged from 7.2 to 3.8 μs, most Sigma systems included two or more blocks of 16 general-purpose registers. Switching blocks is accomplished by an instruction, providing fast context switching. Memory in the Sigma systems can be addressed as individual bytes, halfwords, words, all 32-bit Sigma systems except the Sigma 5 and Sigma 8 used a memory map to implement virtual memory. The following description applies to the Sigma 9, other models have minor differences, the effective virtual address of a word is 17 bits wide. Virtual addresses 0 thru 15 are reserved to reference the general purpose register. Otherwise, in virtual memory mode the high-order eight bits of an address, the thirteen bits from the map register plus the remaining nine bits of the virtual address form the address used to access real memory
9.
Unisys
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Unisys Corporation is an American global information technology company based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, that provides a portfolio of IT services, software, and technology. It is the proprietor of the Burroughs and UNIVAC line of computers. Unisys traces its roots back to the founding of American Arithmometer Company in 1886, Unisys predecessor companies also include the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, which developed the worlds first commercial digital computers, the BINAC and the UNIVAC. In September 1986 Unisys was formed through the merger of the mainframe corporations Sperry and Burroughs, the name was chosen from over 31,000 submissions in an internal competition when Chuck Ayoub submitted the word Unisys which was composed of parts of the words united, information and systems. The merger was the largest in the industry at the time. At the time of the merger, Unisys had approximately 120,000 employees, michael Blumenthal became CEO and Chairman after the merger and resigned in 1990 after several years of losses. James Unruh, became the new CEO and Chairman after Blumenthals departure and continued in that role until 1997, by 1997, layoffs had reduced world-wide employee count to approximately 30,000. In addition to hardware, both Burroughs and Sperry had a history of working on U. S. government contracts, Unisys continues to provide hardware, software, and services to various government agencies. In 1988 the company acquired Convergent Technologies, makers of CTOS, joseph McGrath served as CEO and President from January,2005, until September,2008, he was never named chairman. On October 7,2008, J. Edward Coleman replaced J. McGrath as CEO and was named Chairman of the board as well. On November 10,2008, the company was removed from the S&P500 index as the market capitalization of the company had fallen below the S&P500 minimum of $4 billion. On October 6,2014, Unisys announced that Coleman would leave the company effective December 1,2014, Unisys share price immediately fell when this news became public. On January 1,2015, Unisys officially named Peter Altabef as its new president and CEO, paul Weaver, who was formerly Lead Independent Director, was named Chairman. Unisys promotes itself as an information technology company that solves complex IT challenges for some of the world’s largest companies. Including the CIA, FBI, INS, ICE, and the U. S. military, the company maintains a portfolio of over 1,500 U. S. and non-U. S. The companys mainframe line, Clearpath, is capable of running not only mainframe software, the Clearpath system is available in either a UNISYS 2200-based system or an MCP-based system. In 2014, Unisys phased out its CMOS processors, completing the migration of its ClearPath mainframes to Intel x86 chips, the company announced its new ClearPath Dorado 8380 and 8390 systems in May,2015, its most powerful Dorado systems ever. In 2014, CRN ranked Unisys Stealth on its list of Top 10 products for combatting advanced persistent threat, Platform among the Top 10 coolest servers of 2014
10.
VS/9
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VS/9 is a discontinued computer operating system available for the UNIVAC Series 90 mainframes during the late 1960s through 1980s. The 90/60 and 90/70 were repackaged Univac 9700 computers, the 90/60 was introduced shortly thereafter as a slower, less expensive 90/70. In September 1971, RCA decided to exit the computer business after losing about half a billion dollars trying to compete against IBM. Most of the assets of the division were sold to what was then Univac. This included RCAs Spectra series of computers, various external hardware designs, Univac introduced some additional new features to TSOS, and renamed it VS/9. The name TSOS however, remained as the username of the primary privileged account, RCA also sold TSOS to what would become Fujitsu, and it is the basis for Fujitsus BS2000 operating system on its mainframes of the same name. This provided, in general, for input to the terminal to be sent in response to an enter key, the concentrator unit was originally known as the Communications Control Module, or CCM. The MCC-16 supported both the Univac standard terminal renamed to the Uniscope Video Display Terminal or VDT, as well as ordinary ASCII dumb terminals, the VDT also supported direct cursor positioning and input protection through a cursor which indicated that only text after the cursor was to be recognized. A distinction was made between interactive terminals and transactional terminals, where interactive terminals were controlled directly by the operating system, transactional terminals were controlled from a batch program. Initially, this program, known as MCP for Multichannel Communications Program, was developed for the RCA and Sperry batch-oriented operating systems. Once it became clear that they would be phased out in favor of the more robust interactive operating system, VMOS. VMOS became the new moniker for TSOS on RCA Spectra 70 models 46,61,3, and 7 computers, eventually, MCP was enhanced to support Sperry Univac terminals and its name was changed to COS. Ports in the CCM and later in the MCC running in emulation mode could be designated either interactive or transactional, if a port was designated an interactive port, it was controlled by the timesharing services integrated into the VMOS or VS/9 operating system. Transactional ports, on the hand, were controlled by COS. All terminals connected to these ports became the property of the respective controlling host software, timesharing was used for program development allowing much faster program development than the traditional batch process which was state of the art at the time. Each timesharing user was a task by itself and could execute programs, create files, virtual memory page size was fixed at 4096 bytes. This allowed many more tasks to be running simultaneously than would otherwise be constrained by limited, transactional users, on the other hand, were all controlled by a single program and their view of the environment was limited to that which was presented to them. They were not identified as individual tasks and did not have the ability to run programs or request system resources, the CCM and the MCC running in emulation mode were dumb hardware interfaces
11.
Burroughs Corporation
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The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company, the companys history paralleled many of the major developments in computing. At its start it produced mechanical adding machines, and later moved into programmable ledgers and it was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world, also producing related equipment including typewriters and printers. In 1886, the American Arithmometer Company was established in St. Louis, Missouri to produce, in 1904, six years after Burroughs death, the company moved to Detroit and changed its name to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. It was soon the biggest adding machine company in America, the adding machine range began with the basic, hand-cranked P100 which was only capable of adding. The design included some features, foremost of which was the dashpot. The P200 offered a subtraction capability and the P300 provided a means of keeping 2 separate totals, the P400 provided a moveable carriage, and the P600 and top-of-the-range P612 offered some limited programmability based upon the position of the carriage. The range was extended by the inclusion of the J series which provided a single finger calculation facility. In the late 1960s, the Burroughs sponsored nixi-tube provided an electronic display calculator, Burroughs developed a range of adding machines with different capabilities, gradually increasing in their capabilities. A revolutionary adding machine was the Sensimatic, which was able to perform many business functions semi-automatically and it had a moving programmable carriage to maintain ledgers. It could store 9,18 or 27 balances during the ledger posting operations, the Sensimatic developed into the Sensitronic which could store balances on a magnetic stripe which was part of the ledger card. This balance was read into the accumulator when the card was inserted into the carriage, the Sensitronic was followed by the E1000, E2000, E3000, E4000, E6000 and the E8000, which were computer systems supporting card reader/punches and a line printer. Later, Burroughs was selling more than adding machines, including typewriters, electroData had built the Datatron 205 and was working on the Datatron 220. The first major product that came from this marriage was the B205 tube computer. In the late 1960s the L and TC series range was produced which had a golf ball printer and these were popular as branch terminals to the B5500/6500/6700 systems, and sold well in the banking sector, where they were often connected to non-Burroughs mainframes. In conjunction with these products, Burroughs also manufactured a range of cheque processing equipment. In terms of sales, Burroughs was always a distant second to IBM, in fact, IBMs market share was so much larger than all of the others that this group was often referred to as IBM and the Seven Dwarfs. By 1972 when GE and RCA were no longer in the business, the remaining five companies behind IBM became known as the BUNCH
12.
International Computers Limited
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International Computers Limited was a large British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002. It was formed through a merger of International Computers and Tabulators, English Electric Leo Marconi, the companys most successful product line was the ICL2900 Series range of mainframe computers. In later years, ICL attempted to diversify its product line, despite significant sales in overseas markets, ICLs mainframe base was dominated by large contracts from the UK public sector. Significant customers included Post Office Ltd, the Inland Revenue, the Department for Work and Pensions, ICL also had a strong market share with UK local authorities and nationalized utilities including the water, electricity, and gas boards. The company was acquired by Fujitsu, and in April 2002 it was rebranded as Fujitsu. International Computers Limited was formed in 1968 as a part of the Industrial Expansion Act of the Wilson Labour Government, ICL was an initiative of Tony Benn, the Minister of Technology, to create a British computer industry that could compete with major world manufacturers like IBM. ICL represented the last step in a series of mergers that had taken place in the industry since the late 1950s, EELM was itself a merger of the computer divisions of English Electric, LEO and Marconi. Upon its creation, the British government held a ten percent stake in the company, the new board decided that the 1900 should be phased out in favour of the System 4, but shortly afterwards reversed the decision. It is probable that this was due to union and political pressure from the Wilson government. In any event, most of the original EEC board resigned over the interference as they believed that the 1900 series was doomed from the outset, ICL initially thrived, but relied almost wholly on supplying the UK public sector with computers. In 1962 ICT delivered the first ICT1300 series computer which was its first transistor machine, a small team from Ferrantis Canadian subsidiary, Ferranti-Packard, visited the various Ferranti computer labs and saw their work on a next-generation machine. On their return home they produced the Ferranti-Packard 6000 in a short period of time, developing the machine, compilers. A feature of the Executive operating system was its ability to multi task, the machine went on to have some success and sold in small numbers in Canada and the United States. In 1964 ICT purchased the division of Ferranti in another government-forced merger. Ferranti had been building a number of scientific machines based on various university designs since the 1950s. None of these could be considered successful, however. Meanwhile, ICT management in England was looking to rejuvenate their line-up, their latest developments, Management looked at the FP6000 as well as licensing the RCA Spectra 70, an IBM System/360-clone. In the end it was decided to go with the FP6000 as the basis for a line of small-to-midrange machines
13.
IBM System/360
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The IBM System/360 is a mainframe computer system family that was announced by IBM on April 7,1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the range of applications, from small to large. The design made a distinction between architecture and implementation, allowing IBM to release a suite of compatible designs at different prices. The launch of the System/360 family introduced IBMs Solid Logic Technology, the slowest System/360 model announced in 1964, the Model 30, could perform up to 34,500 instructions per second, with memory from 8 to 64 KB. The 1967 IBM System/360 Model 91 could do up to 16.6 million instructions per second, up to 8 megabytes of slower Large Capacity Storage was also available. Many consider the one of the most successful computers in history. The chief architect of System/360 was Gene Amdahl, and the project was managed by Fred Brooks, the commercial release was piloted by another of Watsons lieutenants, John R. Opel, who managed the launch of IBM’s System 360 mainframe family in 1964. Application level compatibility for System/360 software is maintained to present day with the System z servers, contrasting with at-the-time normal industry practice, IBM created an entire series of computers, from small to large, low to high performance, all using the same instruction set. This feat allowed customers to use a model and then upgrade to larger systems as their needs increased without the time. This flexibility greatly lowered barriers to entry, with other vendors, customers had to choose between machines they could outgrow and machines that were potentially overpowered. This meant that many simply did not buy computers. IBM initially announced a series of six computers and forty common peripherals, IBM eventually delivered fourteen models, including rare one-off models for NASA. The initial announcement in 1964 included Models 30,40,50,60,62, the first three were low- to middle-range systems aimed at the IBM1400 series market. All three first shipped in mid-1965, the last three, intended to replace the 7000 series machines, never shipped and were replaced by the 65 and 75, which were first delivered in November 1965, and January 1966, respectively. Later additions to the low-end included models 20,22, and 25, the Model 20 had several sub-models, sub-model 5 was at the higher end of the model. A succession of high-end machines included the Model 67,85,91,95, the 85 design was intermediate between the System/360 line and the follow-on System/370 and was the basis for the 370/165. There was a System/370 version of the 195, but it did not include Dynamic Address Translation, the implementations differed substantially, using different native data path widths, presence or absence of microcode, yet were extremely compatible. Except where specifically documented, the models were architecturally compatible, the 91, for example, was designed for scientific computing and provided out-of-order instruction execution, but lacked the decimal instruction set used in commercial applications
14.
Computer
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A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow a sequence of operations, called a program, such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. The Internet is run on computers and it millions of other computers. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations, early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century, the first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then, conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit, and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing, peripheral devices include input devices, output devices, and input/output devices that perform both functions. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and this usage of the term referred to a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century, from the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, one who calculates, the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean calculating machine is from 1897. The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the use of the term. 1945 under this name, theoretical from 1937, as Turing machine, devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick, later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example, the abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, the Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions and it was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC
15.
ASCII
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ASCII, abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices, most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, although they support many additional characters. ASCII was developed from telegraph code and its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began on October 6,1960, the first edition of the standard was published in 1963, underwent a major revision during 1967, and experienced its most recent update during 1986. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting of lists, and added features for other than teleprinters. Originally based on the English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart above. The characters encoded are numbers 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, basic punctuation symbols, control codes that originated with Teletype machines, for example, lowercase j would become binary 1101010 and decimal 106. ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters,33 are non-printing control characters that affect how text and space are processed and 95 printable characters, of these, the IANA encourages use of the name US-ASCII for Internet uses of ASCII. The ASA became the United States of America Standards Institute and ultimately the American National Standards Institute, there was some debate at the time whether there should be more control characters rather than the lowercase alphabet. The X3.2.4 task group voted its approval for the change to ASCII at its May 1963 meeting, the X3 committee made other changes, including other new characters, renaming some control characters and moving or removing others. ASCII was subsequently updated as USAS X3. 4-1967, then USAS X3. 4-1968, ANSI X3. 4-1977 and they proposed a 9-track standard for magnetic tape, and attempted to deal with some punched card formats. The X3.2 subcommittee designed ASCII based on the earlier teleprinter encoding systems, like other character encodings, ASCII specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and character symbols. This allows digital devices to communicate each other and to process, store. Before ASCII was developed, the encodings in use included 26 alphabetic characters,10 numerical digits, ITA2 were in turn based on the 5-bit telegraph code Émile Baudot invented in 1870 and patented in 1874. The committee debated the possibility of a function, which would allow more than 64 codes to be represented by a six-bit code. In a shifted code, some character codes determine choices between options for the character codes. It allows compact encoding, but is reliable for data transmission. The standards committee decided against shifting, and so ASCII required at least a seven-bit code, the committee considered an eight-bit code, since eight bits would allow two four-bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary-coded decimal
16.
Binary-coded decimal
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In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each decimal digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Special bit patterns are used for a sign or for other indications. The precise 4-bit encoding may vary however, for technical reasons, the ten states representing a BCD decimal digit are sometimes called tetrades with those dont care-states unused named pseudo-tetrads or pseudo-decimal digit). BCDs principal drawbacks are an increase in the complexity of the circuits needed to implement basic arithmetics. BCD was used in many early computers, and is implemented in the instruction set of machines such as the IBM System/360 series and its descendants. BCD takes advantage of the fact that any one decimal numeral can be represented by a four bit pattern, the most obvious way of encoding digits is natural BCD, where each decimal digit is represented by its corresponding four-bit binary value, as shown in the following table. This is also called 8421 encoding, other encodings are also used, including so-called 4221 and 7421 — named after the weighting used for the bits — and excess-3. For example, the BCD digit 6, 0110b in 8421 notation, is 1100b in 4221, 0110b in 7421, Packed, Two numerals are encoded into a single byte, with one numeral in the least significant nibble and the other numeral in the most significant nibble. To represent numbers larger than the range of a single byte any number of contiguous bytes may be used, also note how packed BCD is more efficient in storage usage as compared to unpacked BCD, encoding the same number in unpacked format would consume twice the storage. Shifting and masking operations are used to pack or unpack a packed BCD digit, other logical operations are used to convert a numeral to its equivalent bit pattern or reverse the process. BCD is very common in systems where a numeric value is to be displayed, especially in systems consisting solely of digital logic. By employing BCD, the manipulation of data for display can be greatly simplified by treating each digit as a separate single sub-circuit. This matches much more closely the reality of display hardware—a designer might choose to use a series of separate identical seven-segment displays to build a metering circuit. If the numeric quantity were stored and manipulated as pure binary, therefore, in cases where the calculations are relatively simple, working throughout with BCD can lead to a simpler overall system than converting to and from binary. Most pocket calculators do all their calculations in BCD, the same argument applies when hardware of this type uses an embedded microcontroller or other small processor. Often, smaller code results when representing numbers internally in BCD format, for these applications, some small processors feature BCD arithmetic modes, which assist when writing routines that manipulate BCD quantities. In Packed BCD, each of the two nibbles of each byte represent a decimal digit, Packed BCD has been in use since at least the 1960s and is implemented in all IBM mainframe hardware since then. Most implementations are big endian, i. e. with the more significant digit in the half of each byte
17.
RCA Spectra 70
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The RCA Spectra 70 was a line of electronic data processing equipment manufactured by the Radio Corporation of America’s computer division beginning in April 1965. The Spectra 70 line included several CPU models, various configurations of core memory, mass-storage devices, terminal equipment, the system architecture and instruction-set were largely compatible with the non-privileged instruction-set of the IBM System/360. Four models of the Spectra 70 CPU were offered in 1965, some of the main features were, The systems were upward-compatible, allowing programs written for a smaller model to run on any larger machine in the series. Larger machines in the series were also faster, with access times ranging from two microseconds in the 70/15 to 0.84 microseconds in the 70/55. Memory capacities ranged from a minimum of 4,096 bytes in the 70/15 to a maximum of 524,288 bytes in the 70/55, all used the Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code of eight bits plus parity for internal data representation. The use of an electrical interface allowed the same peripherals to be used with any CPU model in the series. Simultaneous input and output was accomplished by the use of intelligent communication channels, the RCA Model 70/15 was a small-scale processor that could still support a variety of applications. Memory limitations and relatively low processing speed made its use as a computer system somewhat impractical. The 70/15 was often used as a processor for larger systems or used as an intelligent terminal for remote job entry. Two memory configurations for the 70/15 were available, either 4,096 bytes or 8,192 bytes of core memory, the memory cycle time for a 70/15 was 2 microseconds per byte of information. The RCA Model 70/25 was a small-to-medium scale computer system that supported a variety of applications. In large installations, the 70/25 might also be used as a subsystem in a multi-processor complex, high throughput was facilitated by the use of fast memory and multiple simultaneous input/output streams. Equipped with selector channels and a channel, the 70/25 could concurrently operate eight low-speed devices in addition to eight high-speed devices. Memory capacities for the 70/25 ranged from a minimum of 16,384 bytes to a maximum of 65,536 bytes, the memory cycle time was 1.5 microseconds to access one 8 bit byte. The RCA Model 70/35 was the fifth in the series of Spectra computers that was released in September 1965 and it was a medium-scale computer combining third-generation technology and speed in an efficient low-cost data system. The Spectra 70/35 handled a range of tasks at almost twice the speed of other general-purpose computers in its price range. Unlike the Model 70/45 and 70/55 it did not offer the option of a floating point processor, the maximum memory was limited to 32,768 bytes from two 16,384 byte core memories. It was offered with both synchronous and asynchronous controllers that allowed it to communicate with other computers, the students were learning the fundamentals of programming and system operation with hands-on experience
18.
Peripheral
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A peripheral is an ancillary device used to put information into and get information out of the computer. Touchscreens are an example that combines different devices into a hardware component that can be used both as an input and output device. A peripheral device is defined as any auxiliary device such as a computer mouse or keyboard that connects to. Other examples of peripherals are image scanners, tape drives, microphones, loudspeakers, webcams, common input peripherals include keyboards, computer mice, graphic tablets, touchscreens, barcode readers, image scanners, microphones, webcams, game controllers, light pens, and digital cameras. Common output peripherals include computer displays, printers, projectors, computer hardware Controller Display device Expansion card Punched card input/output Punched tape Video game accessory
19.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
20.
Z/OS
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Z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM mainframes, produced by IBM. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn followed a string of MVS versions, like OS/390, z/OS combines a number of formerly separate, related products, some of which are still optional. Z/OS offers the attributes of modern operating systems but also much of the functionality originating in the 1960s. Z/OS was first introduced in October 2000, as a result, z/OS hosts a broad range of commercial and open source software. Z/OS can communicate directly via TCP/IP, including IPv6, and includes standard HTTP servers along with common services such as FTP, NFS. Another central design philosophy is support for high quality of service, even within a single operating system instance. This capability inherently supports multi-tenancy within an operating system image. However, modern IBM mainframes also offer two levels of virtualization, LPARs and z/VM. These new functions within the hardware, z/OS, and z/VM — and Linux, many of them utilize the WebSphere Application Server for z/OS middleware. From its inception z/OS has supported tri-modal addressing, IBM support for z/OS1.5 ended on March 31,2007. Now z/OS is only supported on z/Architecture mainframes and only runs in 64-bit mode, z/Architecture hardware always starts running in 31-bit mode, but current z/OS releases quickly switch to 64-bit mode and will not run on hardware that does not support 64-bit mode. However, increasing numbers of products and applications, such as DB2 Version 8 and above, now require. IBM markets z/OS as its operating system, suited for continuous. U. S. standard commercial z/OS pricing starts at about $125 per month, including support, z/OS introduced Variable Workload License Charges and Entry Workload License Charges which are sub-capacity billing options. VWLC and EWLC customers only pay for peak monthly z/OS usage, VWLC and EWLC are also available for most IBM software products running on z/OS, and their peaks are separately calculated but can never exceed the z/OS peak. To be eligible for sub-capacity licensing, a customer must be running in 64-bit mode, must have completely eliminated OS/390 from the system. Sub-capacity billing substantially reduces software charges for most IBM mainframe customers, advanced Workload License Charges is the successor to VWLC on mainframe models starting with the zEnterprise 196, and EAWLC is an option on zEnterprise 114 models. AWLC and EAWLC offer further sub-capacity discounts, within each address space, z/OS typically permits the placement of only data, not code, above the 2 GB bar
21.
IBM System z
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IBM System z is a family name used by IBM for all of its mainframe computers. The zSeries, System z and zEnterprise families were named for their availability – z stands for zero downtime, the systems are built with spare components capable of hot failovers to ensure continuous operations. The System z family maintains full backward compatibility, in effect, current systems are the direct, lineal descendants of System/360, announced in 1964, and the System/370 from the 1970s. Many applications written for these systems can run unmodified on the newest System z over five decades later. Virtualization is required by default on IBM z Systems, first layer virtualization is provided by the Processor Resource and System Manager to deploy one or more Logical Partitions. Each LPAR supports a variety of operating systems, a hypervisor called z/VM can also be run as the second layer virtualization in LPARs to create as many virtual machines as there are resources assigned to the LPARs to support them. The first layer of z System virtualization allows a z machine to run a number of LPARs. These can be considered virtual bare metal servers because PR/SM allows CPUs to be dedicated to individual LPARs, Z Systems PR/SM and hardware attributes allow compute resources to be dynamically changed to meet workload demands. CPU and memory resources can be added to the system and dynamically assigned, recognized. I/O resources such as IP and SAN ports can also be added dynamically and they are virtualized and shared across all LPARs. The hardware component that provides this capability is called the Channel Subsystem, each LPAR can be configured to either see or not see the virtualized I/O ports to establish desired shareness or isolation. This virtualization capability allows significant reduction in I/O resources because of its ability to share them, PR/SM on z Systems has earned Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5+ security certification, and z/VM has earned Common Criteria EAL4+ certification. The KVM hypervisor from Linux has also been ported, since the move away from the System/390 name, a number of System z models have been released. These can be grouped into families with similar architectural characteristics, the zEnterprise System consists of three components. First is a System z server, second is the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension. Last is the management layer, IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager, the zBX supports a private high speed internal network that connects it to the central processing complex, which reduces the need for networking hardware and provides inherently high security. The IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager integrates the System z and zBX resources as a single virtualized system and it can identify system bottlenecks or failures among disparate systems and if a failure occurs it can dynamically reallocate system resources to prevent or reduce application problems. The Unified Resource Manager provides energy monitoring and management, resource management, increased security, virtual networking, according to IBM, it is the most scalable Linux server available with support for up to 6,000 virtual machines in a single-footprint
22.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
23.
IBM AIX
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AIX is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4. 3BSD-compatible extensions and it is one of five commercial operating systems that have versions certified to The Open Groups UNIX03 standard. The AIX family of operating systems debuted in 1986, became the operating system for the RS/6000 series on its launch in 1990. It is currently supported on IBM Power Systems alongside IBM i, Unix started life at AT&Ts Bell Labs research center in the early 1970s, running on DEC minicomputers. By 1976, the system was in use at various academic institutions, including Princeton. This port would later grow out to become UTS, a mainframe Unix offering by IBMs competitor Amdahl Corporation, IBMs own involvement in Unix can be dated to 1979, when it assisted Bell Labs in doing its own Unix port to the 370. In the process, IBM made modifications to the TSS/370 hypervisor to better support Unix and it took until 1985 for IBM to offer its own Unix on the S/370 platform, IX/370, which was developed by Interactive Systems Corporation and intended by IBM to compete with Amdahl UTS. AIX Version 1, introduced in 1986 for the IBM6150 RT workstation, was based on UNIX System V Releases 1 and 2, in developing AIX, IBM and Interactive Systems Corporation also incorporated source code from 4.2 and 4.3 BSD UNIX. Among other variants, IBM later produced AIX Version 3, based on System V Release 3, since 1990, AIX has served as the primary operating system for the RS/6000 series. AIX Version 4, introduced in 1994, added symmetric multiprocessing with the introduction of the first RS/6000 SMP servers and continued to evolve through the 1990s, culminating with AIX4.3.3 in 1999. Version 4.1, in a modified form, was also the standard operating system for the Apple Network Server systems sold by Apple Computer to complement the Macintosh line. IBM maintains that their license was irrevocable, and continued to sell, AIX was a component of the 2003 SCO v. IBM lawsuit, in which the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging IBM contributed SCOs intellectual property to the Linux codebase. The SCO Group, who argued they were the owners of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system. In March 2010, a jury returned a finding that Novell, not the SCO Group. AIX6 was announced in May 2007, and it ran as an open beta from June 2007 until the availability of AIX6.1 on November 9,2007. Major new features in AIX6.1 included full role-based access control, workload partitions, enhanced security, AIX7.1 was announced in April 2010, and an open beta ran until general availability of AIX7.1 in September 2010. Several new features, including better scalability, enhanced clustering and management capabilities were added, AIX7.1 includes a new built-in clustering capability called Cluster Aware AIX. AIX is able to organize multiple LPARs through the communications channel to neighboring CPUs
24.
RS/6000
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RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC-based UNIX servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBMs POWER, RS/6000 was renamed eServer pSeries in October 2000. The first generations of RS/6000 systems used the Micro Channel bus technology, some later models used the standardized PReP and CHRP platforms, co-developed with Apple and Motorola, with Open Firmware. Linux is widely used on CHRP based RS/6000s, but support was added after the RS/6000 name was changed to eServer pSeries in 2000, RS/6000 types of computers are the POWERserver servers, POWERstation workstations and Scalable POWERparallel supercomputer platform. While most machines were desktops, desksides, or rack mounted, there was a laptop model too, some models were marketed under the RS/6000 POWERstation and POWERserver names. The Model N40 was PowerPC-based notebook developed and manufactured by Tadpole Technology for IBM and it became available on 25 March 1994, priced at US$12,000. The internal batteries could power the system for 45 minutes only and these workstations were marketed under the PowerStation name. This type was for Xstations, IBMs line of X terminal, the 380,390, and 39H servers correspond to the 3AT, 3BT, and 3CT workstations. Many RS/6000 and subsequent pSeries machines came with a service processor, the service processor could call a phone number in case of serious failure with the machine. Late in the RS/6000 cycle, the processor was converged with the one used on the AS/400 machines. IBM POWER microprocessors IBM AIX IBM Scalable POWERparallel IBM pSeries IBM System p General 27 years of IBM RISC IBM Archives, A Brief History of RISC, the IBM RS/6000 and the IBM eServer pSeries
25.
IBM Power Systems
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Power Systems is IBMs Power Architecture-based server line. Before the Power Systems line was announced on April 2,2008 and they merged to use essentially the same hardware platform in 2001/2002 with the introduction of the POWER4 processor. After that, there was little difference between both the p and the i hardware, the differences were in the software and services offerings. With the introduction of the POWER5 processor in 2004, even the product numbering was synchronized, the System i5570 was virtually identical to the System p5570
26.
IBM Personal Computer
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The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
27.
IBM System/370
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The IBM System/370 was a model range of IBM mainframe computers announced on June 30,1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. A Dynamic Address Translation option was not announced until 1972, 128-bit floating point arithmetic on all models, the original System/370 line underwent several architectural improvements during its roughly 20-year lifetime. The first System/370 machines, the Model 155, the Model 165, and these changes included,13 new instructions, among which were MOVE LONG, COMPARE LOGICAL LONG, thereby permitting operations on up to 2^24-1 bytes, vs. They did not include support for virtual memory, in 1972, a very significant change was made when support for virtual memory was introduced with IBMs System/370 Advanced Function announcement. IBM had initially chosen to exclude virtual storage from the S/370 line, the S/370-145 had an associative memory used by the microcode for the DOS compatibility feature from its first shipments in June 1971, the same hardware was used by the microcode for DAT. The 145 microcode architecture simplified the addition of virtual memory, allowing this capability to be present in early 145s without the extensive modifications needed in other models. The Reference and Change bits of the Storage-protection Keys, however, were labeled on the rollers, existing S/370-145 customers were happy to learn that they did not have to purchase a hardware upgrade in order to run DOS/VS or OS/VS1. After installation, these models were known as the S/370-155-II and S/370-165-II, IBM wanted customers to upgrade their 155 and 165 systems to the widely sold S/370-158 and -168. This led to the original S/370-155 and S/370-165 models being described as boat anchors, later architectural changes primarily involved expansions in memory – both physical memory and virtual address space – to enable larger workloads and meet client demands for more storage. This was the trend as Moores Law eroded the unit cost of memory. As with all IBM mainframe development, preserving backward compatibility was paramount, in October 1981, the 3033 and 3081 processors added extended real addressing, which allowed 26-bit addressing for physical storage. This capability appeared later on other systems, such as the 4381 and 3090, the cross-memory services capability which facilitated movement of data between address spaces was actually available just prior to S/370-XA architecture on the 3031,3032 and 3033 processors. As described above, the S/370 product line underwent a major architectural change, the evolution of S/370 addressing was always complicated by the basic S/360 instruction set design, and its large installed code base, which relied on a 24-bit logical address. Most shops thus continued to run their 24-bit applications in a higher-performance 31-bit world and this evolutionary implementation had the characteristic of solving the most urgent problems first, relief for real memory addressing being needed sooner than virtual memory addressing. IBMs choice of 31-bit addressing for 370-XA involved various factors, the System/360 Model 67 had included a full 32-bit addressing mode, but this feature was not carried forward to the System/370 series, which began with only 24-bit addressing. When IBM later expanded the S/370 address space in S/370-XA, several reasons are cited for the choice of 31 bits, in particular, the standard subroutine calling convention marked the final parameter word by setting its high bit. Interaction between 32-bit addresses and two instructions that treated their arguments as signed numbers, input from key initial Model 67 sites, which had debated the alternatives during the initial system design period, and had recommended 31 bits. The following table summarizes the major S/370 series and models, the second column lists the principal architecture associated with each series
28.
PDP-11
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The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 had several innovative features, and was easier to program than its predecessors through the additional general-purpose registers. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold and its successor in the mid-range minicomputer niche was the 32-bit VAX-11, named as a nod to the PDP-11s popularity. The PDP-11 is considered by experts to be the most popular minicomputer ever. Design features of the PDP-11 influenced the design of most late-1970s computer systems including the Intel x86, design features of PDP-11 operating systems, as well as other operating systems from Digital Equipment, influenced the design of other operating systems such as CP/M and hence also MS-DOS. For a decade, the PDP-11 was the smallest system that could run Unix and it is commonly stated that the C programming language took advantage of several low-level PDP-11–dependent programming features, albeit not originally by design. In 1967–68, DEC engineers designed a 16-bit, word-addressed machine, management cancelled the project and some of the engineers later left DEC and produced it as the Data General Nova. A subsequent effort, code-named Desk Calculator, looked at a variety of options before choosing what became the 16-bit PDP-11, DECs previous PDP-8 and PDP-9 had 12- and 18-bit words, the PDP-11 family was announced in January 1970 and shipments began early that year. DEC sold over 170,000 PDP-11s in the 1970s, initially manufactured of small-scale transistor–transistor logic, a single-board large scale integration version of the processor was developed in 1975. A two-or-three-chip processor, the J-11 was developed in 1979, the last models of the PDP-11 line were the PDP-11/94 and -11/93 introduced in 1990. The PDP-11 processor architecture has an orthogonal instruction set. For example, instead of such as load and store. More complex instructions such as add likewise can have memory, register, input, most operands can apply any of eight addressing modes to eight registers. The addressing modes provide register, immediate, absolute, relative, deferred, and indexed addressing, use of relative addressing lets a machine-language program be position-independent. Early models of the PDP-11 had no dedicated bus for input/output, an input/output device determined the memory addresses to which it would respond, and specified its own interrupt vector and interrupt priority. DEC openly published the basic Unibus specifications, even offering prototyping bus interface circuit boards, the Unibus made the PDP-11 suitable for custom peripherals. Higher-performance members of the PDP-11 family, starting with the PDP-11/45 Unibus and 11/83 Q-bus systems, instead, memory was interfaced by dedicated circuitry and space in the CPU cabinet, while the Unibus continued to be used for I/O only
29.
Whitespace character
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In computer programming, white space is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a character does not correspond to a visible mark. For example, the common whitespace symbol U+0020 SPACE, also ASCII32, represents a blank space punctuation character in text, with many keyboard layouts, a horizontal whitespace character may be entered through the use of a spacebar. Horizontal white space may also be entered on many keyboards through the use of the Tab ↹ key, although the length of the space may vary. Vertical white space is a bit more varied as to how it is encoded, many early computer games used such codes to draw a screen. The term white space is based on the appearance on ordinary paper. However they are coded inside an application, white space can be processed the same as any character code. The most common whitespace characters may be typed via the bar or the tab key. Depending on context, a line-break generated by the return or enter key may be considered space as well. The table below lists the twenty-five characters defined as characters in the Unicode Character Database. Seventeen use a definition of white space consistent with the algorithm for writing and are known as Bidi-WS characters. The remaining characters may also be used, but are not of this Bidi type, note, Depending on the browser and fonts used to view the following table, not all spaces may be displayed properly. Some fonts display the character as a blank, however the Unicode standard explicitly states that it does not act as a space. Exact space The Cambridge Z88 provided a special exact space displayed as … by the systems display driver. It was therefore known as dot space in conjunction with BBC BASIC. Under codepoint 224 the computer provided a special three-character-cells-wide SPACE symbol SPC. In some cases, spaces are shown simply as blank space, many different characters could be used to produce spaces, and non-character functions can also affect white space. In computer character encodings, there is a normal general-purpose space whose width will vary according to the design of the typeface, typical values range from 1/5 em to 1/3 em
