Concept

IBM 7090

Résumé
The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation was in December 1959. In 1960, a typical system sold for 2.9million(equivalentto2.9 million (equivalent to million in ) or could be rented for $63,500 a month (). The 7090 uses a 36-bit word length, with an address space of 32,768 words (15-bit addresses). It operates with a basic memory cycle of 2.18 μs, using the IBM 7302 Core Storage core memory technology from the IBM 7030 (Stretch) project. With a processing speed of around 100 Kflop/s, the 7090 is six times faster than the 709, and could be rented for half the price. An upgraded version, the 7094 was up to twice as fast. Both the 7090 and the 7094 were withdrawn from sale on July 14, 1969, but systems remained in service for more than a decade after. Although the 709 was a superior machine to its predecessor, the 704, it was being built and sold at the time that transistor circuitry was supplanting vacuum tube circuits. Hence, IBM redeployed its 709 engineering group to the design of a transistorized successor. That project became called the 709-T (for transistorized), which because of the sound when spoken, quickly shifted to the nomenclature 7090 (i.e., seven - oh - ninety). Similarly, the related machines such as the 7070 and other 7000 series equipment were sometimes called by names of digit - digit - decade (e.g., seven - oh - seventy). An upgraded version, the IBM 7094, was first installed in September 1962. It has seven index registers, instead of three on the earlier machines. The 7094 console has a distinctive box on top that displays lights for the four new index registers. The 7094 introduced double-precision floating point and additional instructions, but is largely backward compatible with the 7090.
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