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BESM (БЭСМ) is the name of a series of Soviet
The BESM-6 was the most well-known and influential model of the series designed at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering. The design was completed in 1965. Production started in 1968 and continued for the following 19 years.Очерки по истории советской вычислительной техники и школ программирования (Издательство "Открытые Системы")
ssays on the history of Soviet computer technology and programming schools (Open Systems Publishing) (in Russian),
Google translation
mainframe
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
computers built in 1950–60s. The name is an acronym for "Bolshaya Elektronno-Schetnaya Mashina" ("Большая Электронно-Счётная Машина"), literally "Large Electronic Computing Machine". The series began as a successor to MESM ("Malaya Elektronno-Schetnaya Mashina", "Small Electronic Computing Machine"). MESM was built between 1948 and 1951 and was one of the first electronic computers produced in continental Europe.
Models
The BESM series included six models.BESM-1
''BESM-1'', originally referred to as simply the BESM or BESM AN ("BESM Akademii Nauk", BESM of the Academy of Sciences), was completed in 1952. Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes. At the time of completion, it was the fastest computer in Europe. The floating-point numbers were represented as 39-bit words: 32 bits for the mantissa, one bit for sign, and 1 + 5 bits for the exponent. It was capable of representing numbers in the range 10−9 – 1010. BESM-1 had 1024 words of read–write memory using ferrite cores, and 1024 words of read-only memory based on semiconducting diodes. It also had external storage: fourmagnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
units of 30,000 words each, and fast magnetic drum storage with a capacity of 5120 words and an access rate of 800 words/second. The computer was capable of performing 8–10 KFlops
In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...
. The energy consumption was approximately 30 kW, not accounting for the cooling systems.
BESM-2
''BESM-2'' also used vacuum tubes.BESM-3M and BESM-4
''BESM-3M'' and ''BESM-4'' were built using transistors. Their architecture was similar to that of the M-20 andM-220
''Minsk'' family of mainframe computers was developed and produced in the Byelorussian SSR from 1959 to 1975.
Models
The MINSK-1 was a vacuum-tube digital computer that went into production in 1960.
The MINSK-2 was a solid-state digital computer ...
series. The word size was 45 bits. Thirty BESM-4 machines were built. BESM-4 was used to create the first ever computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes (still images) and dynamic images (moving images), while computer animation refe ...
. The prototypes of both models were made in 1962–63, and the beginning of the series release was in 1964.
EPSILON
Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or lunate ; el, έψιλον) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel or . In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was der ...
(a macro language with high level features including strings and lists, developed by Andrey Ershov at Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk (, also ; rus, Новосиби́рск, p=nəvəsʲɪˈbʲirsk, a=ru-Новосибирск.ogg) is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the Russian Census ...
in 1967) was used to implement ALGOL 68 on the M-220.
BESM-6
The BESM-6 was the most well-known and influential model of the series designed at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering. The design was completed in 1965. Production started in 1968 and continued for the following 19 years.ssays on the history of Soviet computer technology and programming schools (Open Systems Publishing) (in Russian),
Google translation
See also
* Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev * Lev Korolyov * List of Soviet computer systems *History of computing hardware
The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans.
The first aids to computation were purely mechan ...
* History of computing in the Soviet Union
* List of vacuum tube computers
References
Further reading
* * A museum curator suggests Russia's BESM supercomputer may have been superior to the USA's supercomputers during the early stages of the Cold War. * {{List of Soviet computer systems Mainframe computers Supercomputers Vacuum tube computers Soviet inventions Transistorized computers Soviet computer systems