Fall 2002

From Kilobytes to Terabytes: The Contrast of Old and New Computer Systems

Before the 1940’s, a computer was a tool used mostly by the military, the government and large companies. As the 1950’s rolled around, smaller companies found this new tool a useful one in expanding business. Computer companies like Burroughs and International Business Machines (IBM) began to expand and find their niche. By the late 1950’s, colleges and universities found these new computing machines were becoming vital to research and were an effective tool for recruiting.

     In the summer of 1958, Chancellor Hardin asked Dean John C. Weaver to identify the most urgent research needs of the university. Weaver replied that the Number One need of the University was a centralized computing center. The staff unanimously agreed.

     Weaver stressed the importance of computing to institutions on the leading edge. “In too few years, no institution will be considered adequate for research training without a well-organized computing laboratory,” he said.

     The first computer Weaver suggested was the IBM 650—one of the most widely used computers of the time. It was made available to colleges and universities on a rental basis and at a 60 percent educational discount. The applicable IBM hardware would rent for $24,408 annually.

     Despite Weaver’s recommendations and the wide use of the IBM computer, the University opted for the Burroughs 205. On Sept. 23, 1960 it arrived and was installed.

     In the beginning, the Center was expected to serve the University in the same way as the library. Everyone would have access and users would have to program their problems, code their solution and participate in running the program on the machine. The staff would just instruct and help when needed. Staff and students would use the center for free except for tape and cardpunches. Nonstudents would pay up to $40 per hour on the 205 computer. With approval from the University Research Council, nonstudents and faculty could get free time on the computers. The center was modeled after existing ones at Virginia and Utah.

     The University’s needs for the computer continually grew, but the computer did not. It quickly became a valuable research tool and time on the computer was worth quite a bit. The College of Engineering had since acquired its own IBM 1620 and endured heated internal exchanges concerning its use.

     In a proposal in 1961, the University of Nebraska Computing Center made some very important statements about the 205 and concluded that the card/paper-tape machine was outdated; a system with magnetic tape drives and a module disk file would better suit the needs of the University. One popular system of the time was the IBM 1410.

     As long as the code was written in FORTRAN, the 1410 was compatible with the 20K storage IBM 1620, systems the colleges of Engineering and Agriculture previously had purchased. The 1410 had a 40,000-character memory with 4.5 microsecond access time to these characters. The disk storage module could hold 20 million characters with 50-180-millisecond access times. The four magnetic tape drives could read 20,000 characters per second.

     To demonstrate the need for a new computing system, the computing center made comparisons between the University of Oklahoma’s IBM 1410 and Nebraska’s Burroughs 205. The computations and programs were 50 times faster on Oklahoma’s machine. The library of available programs came from such institutions as UCLA, Columbia University, Penn State and the University of Michigan. These programs could do matrix inversions, simultaneous equation solving, polynomial root finding, least square filters, Eigenvalue calculating and Eigenvector computing.

     With these many considerations in mind, it appeared as if the IBM 1410 would be the best buy on the market. But even with all the positive details about the 1410, there were obstacles the University would have to deal with in order to receive the system. The University was facing a deadline to order the 1410 to take advantage of a 60 percent educational discount from IBM. Since the Burroughs 205 had become outdated so quickly, funding from sources such as the National Science Foundation had dried up. It cost the University 10 times the as much money to run programs on the Burroughs as it did on the IBM 1410.

     B.H. Platt of Iowa State University wrote a letter to University of Nebraska comptroller Joseph Soshnik on Jan. 14, 1963, explaining the ISU setup. An IBM 1401, IBM 650 and an ISU-built system made up ISU’s computing center. The “center” was really spread across campus, but shared between departments. The registrar’s office utilized the system, as did the residence halls, student classes and labs.

     Much of the equipment at ISU was rented. “With the rapid changes in this industry, I think it would be foolish to purchase the equipment,” Platt said.

     Since the first days of the Computing Center, there have been some changes in the way the University handles computing. Because prices are far more reasonable, the University no longer rents the machinery. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering handles the computing needs of students in this day and age. In similar fashion, the department recently upgraded to a more modern system. Those students who have CSE e-mail accounts already have received the e-mail saying that the CSCE server is up and running with the CSE server being phased out. According to Charles Daniel, UNIX system manager and advisory committee member to the Research Computing Center, the University tries to have an up-to-date system.

     “Every time the Department upgrades, every four to five years, we want to see a 10-fold improvement in some aspects and more,” Daniel said.

     There definitely is an improvement when a comparison is made of some of the statistics of the two systems. The CSE server had four 450 MHz processors while CSCE has eight 750 MHz RISC processors. CSCE has 255 GB of disk space allocated for all the students. CSE only had 1 GB of RAM, while CSCE has 32 GB of memory. The 32 GB of RAM was greater than expected by many in the department.

     “We got more than we expected in terms of what we paid for and our returns,” Daniel said.

     This new server’s price was in the $70,000-$75,000 range, similar to what CSE’s cost about four years ago. CSCE also has three years of maintenance included with the deal. The deal with Sun Microsystems appeared to be the best bet. With a system of this magnitude, a bidding process included such companies as SGI and IBM. This is the first Sun Server the department has used. Daniel also said it has lived up to the expectations with no visible performance degradation.

     Over the past months, CREE was another Sun server up and running in order to test the waters on a Sun system’s usability. With only two CPUs and 2 GB of RAM, it was used as a running test and a stepping-stone into the more powerful system. Becoming familiarized with the system was important for the department in order to maintain the best service for faculty and students.

     “The department bought something small because they always try to provide all types of platforms for students and people in the department,” Daniel said.

     To better serve the students, this server is located in the basement of Ferguson Hall where it can utilize the 1 G-bit fiber optic connections with other computers. The CSE server is located in the basement of Walter Scott Engineering Center and has a 100 M-bit connection.

     Although these systems are meant to help with the needs of students, the Research Computing Facility handles the research needs of those who need more powerful computer time. Their fastest system, PrairieFire, is ranked as the 139th fastest computer in the world according to http://www.top500.org/, a site established “to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing.” This system is composed of 128 Nodes, each with two 1.4 GHz AMD Processors, 1 GB of onboard memory, and 20 GB of hard disk space. With such high computing speed and great storage, PrairieFire can be used to model scenarios such as biological attack dispersion, vehicle collisions and quasars.

     Renee Augustyn, computer engineering, has worked on three dimensional models of PrairieFire, including individual nodes and even node parts. Eventually PraireFire will render images and movies, greatly reducing the amount of time needed to create new promotional materials.

     Image rendering is one important aspect in the future of PraireFire. According to a June 24 e-mail from Richard Sincovec, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, PrairieFire eventually will be connected to the Access Grid.

     According to the government website, “The Access Grid (AG) is the ensemble of resources that can be used to support human interaction across the grid. It consists of multimedia display, presentation and interactions environments, interfaces to grid middleware, interfaces to visualization environments.”

     Said Sincovec in the e-mail: “We plan to use the Access Grid technology for real-time collaborative software development and testing.” Simulations can be viewed in real-time and decisions can be made on the fly.

     As these technologies improve and expand, students will likely see powerful research tools available for more extensive undergraduate work. Processing speeds unimaginable to professors in the 1960’s are available to almost every student within seconds.