The IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation (ISPW) was a hardware digital audio workstation developed by

IRCAM IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of Avant-garde music, avant garde and Electroacoustic ...

and the Ariel Corporation in the late 1980s. In

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

, the ISPW is referred to as the SIM (''Station d'informatique musicale''). Eric Lindemann was the principal designer of the ISPW hardware as well as manager of the overall hardware/software effort. It consisted of up to three customized DSP boards that could be plugged into the expansion

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...

on a

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

Computer (a "cube"). The ISPW could then run a customized real-time audio processing

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

on the hardware boards controlled by a

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

application on the NeXT. Each ISPW card had two

Intel i860 The Intel i860 (also known as 80860) is a RISC microprocessor design introduced by Intel in 1989. It is one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set architecture since the failed Intel iAPX 432 from the beginning o ...

microprocessors (running at 80 MFLOPS). An additional card with eight channels of

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

I/O was also available for multi-channel sound recording and playback. A three-board ISPW provided what was at the time unsurpassed signal processing and audio synthesis power on a single workstation. A single ISPW card cost approximately $12,000US (not including the computer), which made it prohibitively expensive outside of research institutes and universities. And the I860 board : The main server software developed by IRCAM for the ISPW was called FTS ("Faster Than Sound"). The main NeXT client application was a graphical program called

Max Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (American dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (British dog), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of the OBE) * Max (gorilla) ...

, developed by

Miller Puckette Miller Smith Puckette (born 1959) is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1994. Puckette is known for aut ...

. A commercial version of Max (without the FTS server) was licensed by IRCAM to Opcode Systems (and, later,

Cycling '74 Cycling '74 (also known as "C74" and stylized as '74) is an American software development company founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli, headquartered in San Francisco, California and owned by Ableton. The company employs the digital signal processi ...

). Max/FTS eventually migrated to a software-only application for SGI and DEC Alpha computers. It is the direct predecessor to jMax. See also Pd.

External links

A brief history of MAX
from IRCAM Computer music Computer workstations NeXT Digital signal processors {{Microcompu-stub