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The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first
CDC 6600 The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...
became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three times faster than the next fastest machine of its day, the IBM 7030 Stretch." Originally designed to meet a requirement formulated by
Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...
at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in respons ...
, the first example was delivered to
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
in 1961, and a second customized version, the
IBM 7950 Harvest The IBM 7950, also known as Harvest, was a one-of-a-kind adjunct to the Stretch computer which was installed at the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Built by IBM, it was delivered in 1962 and operated until 1976, when it was decommi ...
, to the
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...
in 1962. The Stretch at the
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research ...
at
Aldermaston Aldermaston is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 Census, the parish had a population of 1015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately from Newbury, Basingsto ...
, England was heavily used by researchers there and at AERE Harwell, but only after the development of the S2 Fortran Compiler which was the first to add
dynamic array In computer science, a dynamic array, growable array, resizable array, dynamic table, mutable array, or array list is a random access, variable-size list data structure that allows elements to be added or removed. It is supplied with standard l ...
s, and which was later ported to the Ferranti Atlas of
Atlas Computer Laboratory The Atlas Computer Laboratory on the Harwell, Oxfordshire campus shared by the Harwell Laboratory was one of the major computer laboratories in the world, which operated between 1961 and 1975 to provide a service to British scientists at a ti ...
at Chilton. The 7030 was much slower than expected and failed to meet its aggressive performance goals. IBM was forced to drop its price from $13.5 million to only $7.78 million and withdrew the 7030 from sales to customers beyond those having already negotiated contracts. ''
PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...
'' magazine named Stretch one of the biggest project management failures in IT history. Within IBM, being eclipsed by the smaller
Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeyw ...
seemed hard to accept. The project lead, , was initially made a scapegoat for his role in the "failure", but as the success of the
IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems 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 both commercial and scientific applica ...
became obvious, he was given an official apology and, in 1966 was made an IBM Fellow. In spite of Stretch's failure to meet its own performance goals, it served as the basis for many of the design features of the successful IBM System/360, which was announced in 1964 and first shipped in 1965.


Development history

In early 1955, Dr.
Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...
of the University of California Radiation Laboratory wanted a new scientific computing system for three-dimensional
hydrodynamic In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...
calculations. Proposals were requested from IBM and
UNIVAC UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company an ...
for this new system, to be called ''Livermore Automatic Reaction Calculator'' or LARC. According to IBM executive Cuthbert Hurd, such a system would cost roughly $2.5 million and would run at one to two MIPS. Delivery was to be two to three years after the contract was signed. At IBM, a small team at
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including John Griffith and
Gene Amdahl Gene Myron Amdahl (November 16, 1922 – November 10, 2015) was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies, especially Amdahl Corporation. ...
worked on the design proposal. Just after they finished and were about to present the proposal, Ralph Palmer stopped them and said, "It's a mistake." The proposed design would have been built with either
point-contact transistor The point-contact transistor was the first type of transistor to be successfully demonstrated. It was developed by research scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December 1947. They worked in a group led by physicis ...
s or
surface-barrier transistor The surface-barrier transistor is a type of transistor developed by Philco in 1953 as an improvement to the alloy-junction transistor and the earlier point-contact transistor. Like the modern Schottky transistor, it offered much higher speed tha ...
s, both likely to be soon outperformed by the then newly invented diffusion transistor. IBM returned to Livermore and stated that they were withdrawing from the contract, and instead proposed a dramatically better system, "We are not going to build that machine for you; we want to build something better! We do not know precisely what it will take but we think it will be another million dollars and another year, and we do not know how fast it will run but we would like to shoot for ten million instructions per second." Livermore was not impressed, and in May 1955 they announced that UNIVAC had won the LARC contract, now called the ''Livermore Automatic Research Computer''. LARC would eventually be delivered in June 1960. In September 1955, fearing that
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
might also order a LARC, IBM submitted a preliminary proposal for a high-performance binary computer based on the improved version of the design that Livermore had rejected, which they received with interest. In January 1956, Project Stretch was formally initiated. In November 1956, IBM won the contract with the aggressive performance goal of a "speed at least 100 times the
IBM 704 The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Proc ...
" (i.e. 4 MIPS). Delivery was slated for 1960. During design, it proved necessary to reduce the clock speeds, making it clear that Stretch could not meet its aggressive performance goals, but estimates of performance ranged from 60 to 100 times the IBM 704. In 1960, the price of $13.5 million was set for the IBM 7030. In 1961, actual
benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevatio ...
s indicated that the performance of the IBM 7030 was only about 30 times the IBM 704 (i.e. 1.2 MIPS), causing considerable embarrassment for IBM. In May 1961, Thomas J. Watson Jr. announced a price cut of all 7030s under negotiation to $7.78 million and immediate withdrawal of the product from further sales. Its
floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be r ...
addition time is 1.38–1.50
microsecond A microsecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one millionth (0.000001 or 10−6 or ) of a second. Its symbol is μs, sometimes simplified to us when Unicode is not available. A microsecond is equal to 1000 ...
s, multiplication time is 2.48–2.70 microseconds, and division time is 9.00–9.90 microseconds.


Technical impact

While the IBM 7030 was not considered successful, it spawned many technologies incorporated in future machines that were highly successful. The '' Standard Modular System''
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
logic was the basis for the
IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 seri ...
line of scientific computers, the
IBM 7070 IBM 7070 was a decimal-architecture intermediate data-processing system that was introduced by IBM in 1958. It was part of the IBM 700/7000 series, and was based on discrete transistors rather than the vacuum tubes of the 1950s. It was the comp ...
and 7080 business computers, the IBM 7040 and
IBM 1400 The IBM 1400 series were second-generation (transistor) mid-range business decimal computers that IBM marketed in the early 1960s. The computers were offered to replace tabulating machines like the IBM 407. The 1400-series machines stored inform ...
lines, and the
IBM 1620 The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as ...
small scientific computer; the 7030 used about transistors. The IBM 7302 Model I Core Storage units were also used in the IBM 7090, IBM 7070 and IBM 7080.
Multiprogramming In computing, multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a resul ...
, memory protection, generalized interrupts, the eight-bit byte for I/O were all concepts later incorporated in the
IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems 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 both commercial and scientific applica ...
line of computers as well as most later
central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, ...
s (CPU). Stephen Dunwell, the project manager who became a scapegoat when Stretch failed commercially, pointed out soon after the phenomenally successful 1964 launch of System/360 that most of its core concepts were pioneered by Stretch.. By 1966 he had received an apology and been made an IBM Fellow, a high honor that carried with it resources and authority to pursue one's desired research. Instruction pipelining, prefetch and decoding, and memory interleaving were used in later supercomputer designs such as the IBM System/360 Models 91, 95 and
195 Year 195 ( CXCV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scrapula and Clemens (or, less frequently, year 948 ''Ab urbe cond ...
, and the
IBM 3090 The IBM 3090 family is a family of mainframe computers that was a high-end successor to the IBM System/370 series, and thus indirectly the successor to the IBM System/360 launched 25 years earlier. Announced on 12 February 1985, the press releas ...
series as well as computers from other manufacturers. , these techniques are still used in most advanced microprocessors, starting with the 1990s generation that included the Intel Pentium and the Motorola/IBM
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM� ...
, as well as in many embedded microprocessors and microcontrollers from various manufacturers.


Hardware implementation

The 7030 CPU uses
emitter-coupled logic In electronics, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) is a high-speed integrated circuit bipolar transistor logic family. ECL uses an overdriven bipolar junction transistor (BJT) differential amplifier with single-ended input and limited emitter current to ...
(originally called ''current-steering logic'') on 18 types of Standard Modular System (SMS) cards. It uses 4,025 double cards (as shown) and 18,747 single cards, holding 169,100 transistors, requiring a total of 21 kW power. It uses high-speed NPN and PNP germanium drift transistors, with cut-off frequency over 100 MHz, and using ~50 mW each. Some ''third level'' circuits use a 3rd voltage level. Each logic level has a delay of about 20 ns. To gain speed in critical areas emitter-follower logic is used to reduce the delay to about 10 ns. It uses the same core memory as the
IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 seri ...
.


Installations

#
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...
(LASL) in April 1961, accepted in May 1961, and used until June 21, 1971. #
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in respons ...
,
Livermore, California Livermore (formerly Livermorès, Livermore Ranch, and Nottingham) is a city in Alameda County, California. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of California ...
delivered November 1961. #U.S.
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...
in February 1962 as the main CPU of the
IBM 7950 Harvest The IBM 7950, also known as Harvest, was a one-of-a-kind adjunct to the Stretch computer which was installed at the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Built by IBM, it was delivered in 1962 and operated until 1976, when it was decommi ...
system, used until 1976, when the IBM 7955 Tractor tape system developed problems due to worn cams that could not be replaced. #
Atomic Weapons Establishment The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research ...
,
Aldermaston Aldermaston is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 Census, the parish had a population of 1015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately from Newbury, Basingsto ...
, England, delivered February 1962 # U.S. Weather Bureau Washington D.C., delivered June/July 1962. # MITRE Corporation, delivered December 1962. and used until August 1971. In the spring of 1972, it was sold to
Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-da ...
, where it was used by the physics department until scrapped in 1982. #U.S. Navy Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, delivered Sep/Oct 1962. #
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission or CEA ( French: Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives), is a French public government-funded research organisation in the areas of energy, defense and securi ...
, France, delivered November 1963. #IBM. The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's IBM 7030 (except for its
core memory Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber * Core, the centra ...
) and portions of the MITRE Corporation/Brigham Young University IBM 7030 now reside in the
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact o ...
collection, in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...
.


Architecture


Data formats

* Fixed-point numbers are variable in length, stored in either binary (1 to 64 bits) or decimal (1 to 16 digits) and either unsigned format or sign/magnitude format. In decimal format, digits are variable length bytes (4 to 8 bits). *
Floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be r ...
numbers have a 1-bit exponent flag, a 10-bit exponent, a 1-bit exponent sign, a 48-bit magnitude, and a 4-bit sign byte in sign/magnitude format. *Alphanumeric characters are variable length and can use any character code of 8 bits or less. *Bytes are variable length (1 to 8 bits).


Instruction format

Instructions are either 32-bit or 64-bit.


Registers

The registers overlay the first 32 addresses of memory as shown. The accumulator and index registers operate in
sign-and-magnitude In computing, signed number representations are required to encode negative numbers in binary number systems. In mathematics, negative numbers in any base are represented by prefixing them with a minus sign ("−"). However, in RAM or CPU regist ...
format.


Memory

Main memory is 16K to 256K 64-bit binary words, in banks of 16K. The memory was immersion oil-heated/cooled to stabilize its operating characteristics.


Software

* STRETCH Assembly Program (STRAP) * MCP (not to be confused with the Burroughs MCP) * COLASL and IVY programming languages * FORTRAN programming language


See also

*
IBM 608 The IBM 608 Transistor Calculator, a plugboard-programmable unit, was the first IBM product to use transistor circuits without any vacuum tubes and is believed to be the world's first all-transistorized calculator to be manufactured for the comme ...
, the first commercially available transistorized computing device *
ILLIAC II The ILLIAC II was a revolutionary super-computer built by the University of Illinois that became operational in 1962. Description The concept, proposed in 1958, pioneered Emitter-coupled logic (ECL) circuitry, pipelining, and transistor memory ...
, a transistorized super computer from The
University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universi ...
that competed with Stretch.


Notes


References


Further reading

*


External links


Oral history interview with Gene Amdahl
Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundati ...
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Amdahl Amdahl may refer to: People * Einar Amdahl (1888-1974), Norwegian theologist * Bjarne Amdahl (1903-1968), Norwegian pianist and composer * Douglas K. Amdahl (1919–2010), American lawyer and judge from Minnesota * Gene Amdahl (1922–2015), for ...
discusses his role in the design of several computers for IBM including the STRETCH,
IBM 701 The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May ...
, 701A, and
IBM 704 The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Proc ...
. He discusses his work with Nathaniel Rochester and IBM's management of the design process for computers.
IBM Stretch Collections @ Computer History Museum


**
The IBM 7030 FORTRAN System
(IBM Archives)
IBM Stretch (aka IBM 7030 Data Processing System)
*''Planning a Computer System – Project Stretch'', 1962 book.
Scan of copy autographed by several of the contributors

Searchable PDF fileIBM 7030 documents at Bitsavers.org
(PDF files) {{Authority control 7030 7 7030 7030 Computer-related introductions in 1961 64-bit computers