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Central Computer Agency
The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), formerly the Central Computer Agency (CCA), was a UK government agency providing computer and telecoms support to government departments. History Formation Archived records CCTA records are held by The National Archives. In 1957, the UK government formed the Central Computer Agency (CCA) Technical Support Unit (TSU) within HM Treasury to evaluate and advise on computers, initially based around engineers from the telecommunications service. As this unit evolved, it morphed into the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, which also had responsibilities for procurement of United Kingdom Government technological equipment, and later, that centrally funded for University and Research Council systems. Technical services Note that nearly all names and authors, quoted or referenced in this section, were CCTA engineers or scientists. The first external technical publication was in 1960 by J. W. Freebody ...
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Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich City Council local authority area was estimated to be 144,000 in 2021, which was an increase from 143,135 in 2019. The wider Norwich List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, built-up area had a population of 213,166 at the 2011 census. As the seat of the Episcopal see, See of Norwich, the city has one of the country's largest medieval cathedrals. For much of the second millennium, from medieval to just before Industrial Revolution, industrial times, Norwich was one of the most prosperous and largest towns of England; at one point, it was List of towns and cities in England by historical population, second only to London. Today, it is the largest settlement in East Anglia. Heritage and status Norwich claims to be the most complete medie ...
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Minicomputers
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is an exceptionally large machine. Minicomputers in the traditional technical sense covered here are only small relative to generally even earlier and much bigger machines. The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching, as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end-use application. During the two-decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 minicomputer vendor companies formed. Only a half-dozen remained by the mid-1980s. When single-chip CPU microprocessors appeared in the 1970s, the defi ...
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Scalar (computing)
Scalar processors are a class of computer processors that process only one data item at a time. Typical data items include integers and floating point numbers. Classification A scalar processor is classified as a single instruction, single data ( SISD) processor in Flynn's taxonomy. The Intel 486 is an example of a scalar processor. It is to be contrasted with a vector processor where a single instruction operates simultaneously on multiple data items (and thus is referred to as a single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) processor). The difference is analogous to the difference between scalar and vector arithmetic. The term ''scalar'' in computing dates to the 1970 and 1980s when vector processors were first introduced. It was originally used to distinguish the older designs from the new vector processors. Superscalar processor A superscalar processor (such as the Intel P5) may execute more than one instruction during a clock cycle by simultaneously dispatching multiple ...
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CDC Cyber 205
The CDC Cyber range of mainframe-class supercomputers were the primary products of Control Data Corporation (CDC) during the 1970s and 1980s. In their day, they were the computer architecture of choice for scientific and mathematically intensive computing. They were used for modeling fluid flow, material science stress analysis, electrochemical machining analysis, probabilistic analysis, energy and academic computing, radiation shielding modeling, and other applications. The lineup also included the Cyber 18 and Cyber 1000 minicomputers. Like their predecessor, the CDC 6600, they were unusual in using the ones' complement binary representation. Models The Cyber line included five different series of computers: * The 70 and 170 series based on the architecture of the CDC 6600 and CDC 7600 supercomputers, respectively * The 200 series based on the CDC STAR-100—released in the 1970s. * The 180 series developed by a team in Canada—released in the 1980s (after the 200 series) * ...
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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 Establishment (AWRE) with its main site on the former RAF Aldermaston and has major facilities at Burghfield, Blacknest and RNAD Coulport. AWE plc, responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE, is owned by the Ministry of Defence and operated as a non-departmental public body. Until June 2021, AWE plc was owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK, and Serco through AWE Management Ltd, which held a 25‑year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE, although all the sites remained owned by the Government of the United Kingdom which had a golden share in AWE plc. In November 2020, it was announced that the Ministry of Defence had triggered a contractual break point and would take ownership of AWE ...
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Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a type of 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 per second (MIPS). Since 2022, supercomputers have existed which can perform over 1018 FLOPS, so called Exascale computing, exascale supercomputers. For comparison, a desktop computer has performance in the range of hundreds of gigaFLOPS (1011) to tens of teraFLOPS (1013). Since November 2017, all of the TOP500, world's fastest 500 supercomputers run on Linux-based operating systems. Additional research is being conducted in the United States, the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, and China to build faster, more powerful and technologically superior exascale supercomputers. Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, ...
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Cray 1
The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured and marketed by Cray Research. Announced in 1975, the first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976. Eventually, eighty Cray-1s were sold, making it one of the most successful supercomputers in history. It is perhaps best known for its unique shape, a relatively small C-shaped cabinet with a ring of benches around the outside covering the power supplies and the cooling system. The Cray-1 was the first supercomputer to successfully implement the vector processor design. These systems improve the performance of math operations by arranging memory and registers to quickly perform a single operation on a large set of data. Previous systems like the CDC STAR-100 and ASC had implemented these concepts but did so in a way that seriously limited their performance. The Cray-1 addressed these problems and produced a machine that ran several times faster than any similar design. The Cray-1's architect was ...
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Radio And Electronic Engineer
External linksIET Digital Library
British technology-related lists, Journal Electrical-engineering-related lists, IET Institution of Engineering and Technology, Academic journals Institution of Engineering and Technology academic journals, * Lists of academic journals by publisher, Institution of Engineering and Technology ...
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Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, world's third-oldest university in continuous operation. The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient university, ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In 1231, 22 years after its founding, the university was recognised with a royal charter, granted by Henry III of England, King Henry III. The University of Cambridge includes colleges of the University of Cambridge, 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and List of institutions of the University of Cambridge#Schools, Faculties, and Departments, over 150 academic departm ...
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Atlas (computer)
The Atlas was one of the world's first supercomputers, in use from 1962 (when it was claimed to be the most powerful computer in the world) to 1972. Atlas's capacity promoted the saying that when it went offline, half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It is notable for being the first machine with virtual memory (at that time referred to as "one-level store") using paging techniques; this approach quickly spread, and is now ubiquitous. Atlas was a second-generation computer, using discrete germanium transistors. Atlas was created in a joint development effort among the University of Manchester, Ferranti and Plessey. Two other Atlas machines were built: one for BP and the University of London, and one for the Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton near Oxford. A derivative system was built by Ferranti for the University of Cambridge. Called the Titan, or Atlas 2, it had a different memory organisation and ran a time-sharing operating system developed by Camb ...
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Meteorological Office
The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and is led by CEO Penelope Endersby, who took on the role as Chief Executive in December 2018 and is the first woman to do so. The Met Office makes meteorological predictions across all timescales from weather forecasts to climate change. Although an executive agency of the UK Government, the Met Office supports the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive in their functions and preparations ahead of intense weather and planning for extreme weather alerts. Met Office policies can be used by each government to inform their planning and decision making processes. The Met Office has an office located in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, and a forecasting centre in Aberdeen in the north–east of Scotland, which are so ...
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360/195
The IBM System/360 Model 195 is a discontinued IBM computer introduced on August 20, 1969. The Model 195 was a reimplementation of the IBM System/360 Model 91 design using monolithic integrated circuits. It offers "an internal processing speed about twice as fast as the Model 85, the next most powerful System/360". The Model 195 was discontinued on February 9, 1977, the same date as the System/370 Model 195. About 20 Model 195 systems were produced. Technical specifications The basic CPU cycle time is 54 nanoseconds (ns). The system has a high degree of parallelism and can process up to seven operations at a time. The system can be configured with 1, 2, or 4 MB of magnetic core memory (models 195J, 195K, and 195L) with a cycle time of 756 ns. A 32 KB cache, called a ''buffer memory'' in the IBM announcement, is standard. Memory blocks are brought into cache in units of 64 bytes. The normal operating system for the Model 195 is OS/360 Multiprogramming with a Va ...
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