General Information

Serial #

123806

Part Number

1

Total Parts

2

AKA

Data processing board

Patents

N/A

General Description

synthetic board in copper frame/ synthetic & metal parts

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

26.0 cm

Width

19.0 cm

Height

N/A

Thickness

1.8 cm

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Computing Technology

Category

Digital computing devices

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Cray

Country

Mexico

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Ontario

Period

circa 1985 to 1995

Canada

A data processing board for an American made computer used by a Canadian government department, the Communications Security Establishment in Ottawa, ON. The Cray X-MP supercomputer was installed at the CSE in 1985 and was decommissioned 10 years later on Aug. 24th 1995. The original cost was probably in the $5-10M range. Known as ANT-1, it was principally used to solve complex mathematical alogarithms related to codes and code breaking. The shell of the computer is still at the CSE (2005). When decommissioned, staff at the CSE were each given a few of the boards but had to sign a Cray form agreeing not to provide information about the boards to foreign nationals as required by the US Export Administration Regulations. Copies of those signed by Mr. Smith are included.

Function

A data processing board from a Cray supercomputer model X-MP.

Technical

Example of a data processing board for a supercomputer of the mid 1980s. This board shows the evolution of the heart of the (at the time) leading supercomputer, the processing boards of which were designed to allow parallel computing of different tasks simultaneously. Three different types of boards are included in the lot (2005.0027-2005.0028). These are dual boards with ICs mounted on both sides of the two boards. The frames are solid copper and the units plugged into sockets in the computer. Two wires on each board provided positive grounding. The Cray X-MP computer of 1985 had a processing speed of 8.5 nanoseconds per instruction on each of the processing boards. It had a core memory of 8 million 64-bit words and ran the UNICOS operating system, a version of UNIX developed for Cray computers. Related artifacts include the Cray supercomputer model 1S-1300 (1985.0056) that was used by the Atmospheric Environment Service in Dorval, QC and was the first supercomputer in Canada. The museum subsequently acquired from Cray some examples of plug-in processing boards (1996.0124 and 1996.0125) as most of the originals had been removed for protection of their design and patent rights.

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

black lettering on one side reads "TRW 8431 281 52 00 020 10361100-01" with incised "3MD 123806"/ red lettering on other side reads "TRW 8436 281-52-00-020 10361100-01" with black stamped "B"

Missing

appears complete

Finish

green board/ copper coloured frame/ white & black synthetic parts/ metallic parts

Decoration

N/A