ILLIAC
Encyclopedia
ILLIAC was a series of supercomputer
s built at a variety of locations, some at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. In all, five computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974. Some more modern projects also use the name.
(IAS) at Princeton
, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC [1945], edited by John von Neumann
(but with ideas from Eckert & Mauchley and many others.) The designs in this report were not tested at Princeton until a later machine, JOHNNIAC
, was completed in 1953. However, the technical report was a major influence on computing in the 1950's, and was used as a blueprint for many other computers, including two at the University of Illinois, which were both completed before Princeton finished Johnniac. The University of Illinois was the only institution to build two instances of the IAS machine. In fairness, several of the other universities, including Princeton, invented new technology (new types of memory or I/O devices) during the construction of their computers, which delayed those projects.
was the first of two computers built under contract at the University of Illinois. ORDVAC was completed the spring of 1951 and checked out in the summer. In the fall it was delivered to the US Army
's Aberdeen Proving Grounds and was checked out in roughly one week. As part of the contract, funds were provided to the University of Illinois to build a second identical computer known as ILLIAC I.
was built at the University of Illinois based on the same design as the ORDVAC
. It was the first von Neumann architecture
computer built and owned by an American university. It was put into service on September 22, 1952.
ILLIAC I was built with 2,800 vacuum tube
s and weighed about 5 tons. It had 5k of main memory and 64k Drum memory. By 1956 it had gained more computing power than all computers in Bell Labs
combined. ILLIAC I was decommissioned in 1963 when ILLIAC II (see below) became operational.
was the first transistorized
and pipelined
supercomputer
built by the University of Illinois. At its inception in 1958 it was 100 times faster than competing machines of that day. It became operational in 1962, two years later than expected.
ILLIAC II had 8192 words of core memory, backed up by 65,536 words of storage on magnetic drums. The core memory access time was 1.8 to 2 µs. The magnetic drum access time was 7 µs. A "fast buffer" was also provided for storage of short loops and intermediate results (similar in concept to what is now called cache). The "fast buffer" access time was 0.25 µs
The word size was 52 bits. Floating-point numbers used a format with 7 bits of exponent (power of 4) and 45 bits of mantissa
. Instructions were either 26 bits or 13 bits long, allowing packing of up to 4 instructions per memory word. The pipelined functional units were called advanced control, delayed control, and interplay. The computer used Muller speed-independent circuitry (i.e. Muller C-Element) for a portion of the control circuitry.
In 1963 Donald B. Gillies
(who designed the control) used the ILLIAC II to find three Mersenne prime
s, with 2917, 2993, and 3376 digits - the largest primes known at the time.
from Japan participated in the development program and designed the arithmetic logic unit
from September 1960.
was a fine-grained SIMD
pattern recognition computer built by the University of Illinois in 1966.
This ILLIAC's initial task was image processing of bubble chamber
experiments used to detect nuclear particles. Later it was used on biological images. The machine was destroyed in a fire, caused by a Variac shorting on one of the wooden-top benches, in 1968.
was one of the first attempts at a massively parallel computer. Key to the design was fairly high parallelism
with up to 256 processors, used to allow the machine to work on large data sets in what would later be known as vector processing
. ILLIAC IV relied on first and early second generation semiconductor technology, resulting in pull out 'cards' that were on the order of two feet square. The power supplies for the machine were so large that it required designing a single tongue fork lift to remove and reinstall the power supply. The power supply buss bars on the machine spanned distances greater than three feet, and were octopus-like in design. Thick copper, the busses were coated in epoxy that often cracked resulting in shorts and an array of other issues. ILLIAC IV was designed by Burroughs Corporation and built in quadrants in Great Valley, PA during the years of 1967 through 1972. The machine was built in quadrants, with the first quadrant delivered to the University of Illinois in the summer of 1972. The building in which the quadrants was built was designed such that the wall at the end of the building was built to be easily removed. The quadrant itself was built on a flat bed trailer; when ready to deliver, the wall was removed, a truck backed down and connected to the trailer, driving away for delivery. Successive quadrants were built and delivered to the University of Illinois, with the entire system finally ready for operation in 1976, after a decade of development. In addition to being massively parallel, by that time it was also massively late, massively over budget, and massively outperformed by existing commercial machines such as Cray-1
.
. This SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) system embodied advances in interconnection networks, control unit support of parallelism, optimizing compilers and parallel algorithms and applications. It is occasionally referred to as ILLIAC V.
. It was a 256 node Linux
cluster, with each node having two processors.
Trusted ILLIAC nodes contained onboard FPGAs to enable smart compilers and programming models, system assessment and validation, configurable trust mechanisms, automated fault management, on-line adaptation, and numerous other configurable trust frameworks. The nodes each had access to 8 GB memory on a 6.4 GB/s bus, and were connected via 8 GB/s PCI-Express to the FPGAs. A 2.5 GB/s InfiniBand
network provides the internode connectivity. The system was constructed using the help and support of Hewlett-Packard
, AMD and Xilinx
.
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
s built at a variety of locations, some at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. In all, five computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974. Some more modern projects also use the name.
Architectural Blueprint
The architecture for the first two UIUC computers was taken from a technical report from a committee at the Institute for Advanced StudyInstitute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
(IAS) at Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC [1945], edited by John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
(but with ideas from Eckert & Mauchley and many others.) The designs in this report were not tested at Princeton until a later machine, JOHNNIAC
JOHNNIAC
The JOHNNIAC was an early computer built by RAND that was based on the von Neumann architecture that had been pioneered on the IAS machine. It was named in honor of von Neumann, short for John v. Neumann Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer...
, was completed in 1953. However, the technical report was a major influence on computing in the 1950's, and was used as a blueprint for many other computers, including two at the University of Illinois, which were both completed before Princeton finished Johnniac. The University of Illinois was the only institution to build two instances of the IAS machine. In fairness, several of the other universities, including Princeton, invented new technology (new types of memory or I/O devices) during the construction of their computers, which delayed those projects.
ORDVAC
ORDVACORDVAC
The ORDVAC or Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer, an early computer built by the University of Illinois for the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, was based on the IAS architecture developed by John von Neumann, which came to be known as the von Neumann architecture...
was the first of two computers built under contract at the University of Illinois. ORDVAC was completed the spring of 1951 and checked out in the summer. In the fall it was delivered to the US Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
's Aberdeen Proving Grounds and was checked out in roughly one week. As part of the contract, funds were provided to the University of Illinois to build a second identical computer known as ILLIAC I.
ILLIAC I
ILLIAC IILLIAC I
The ILLIAC I , a pioneering computer built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a US educational institution, Manchester University UK having built Manchester Mark 1 in 1948.ILLIAC I was based on the Institute for Advanced Study Von Neumann...
was built at the University of Illinois based on the same design as the ORDVAC
ORDVAC
The ORDVAC or Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer, an early computer built by the University of Illinois for the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, was based on the IAS architecture developed by John von Neumann, which came to be known as the von Neumann architecture...
. It was the first von Neumann architecture
Von Neumann architecture
The term Von Neumann architecture, aka the Von Neumann model, derives from a computer architecture proposal by the mathematician and early computer scientist John von Neumann and others, dated June 30, 1945, entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC...
computer built and owned by an American university. It was put into service on September 22, 1952.
ILLIAC I was built with 2,800 vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
s and weighed about 5 tons. It had 5k of main memory and 64k Drum memory. By 1956 it had gained more computing power than all computers in Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
combined. ILLIAC I was decommissioned in 1963 when ILLIAC II (see below) became operational.
ILLIAC II
The ILLIAC IIILLIAC II
The ILLIAC II was a revolutionary super-computer built by the University of Illinois that became operational in 1962.-Description:The concept, proposed in 1958, pioneered Emitter-coupled logic circuitry, pipelining, and transistor memory with a design goal of 100x speedup compared to ILLIAC...
was the first transistorized
Transistor computer
A transistor computer is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The "first generation" of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky, and were unreliable. A "second generation" of computers, through the late 1950s and...
and pipelined
Instruction pipeline
An instruction pipeline is a technique used in the design of computers and other digital electronic devices to increase their instruction throughput ....
supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
built by the University of Illinois. At its inception in 1958 it was 100 times faster than competing machines of that day. It became operational in 1962, two years later than expected.
ILLIAC II had 8192 words of core memory, backed up by 65,536 words of storage on magnetic drums. The core memory access time was 1.8 to 2 µs. The magnetic drum access time was 7 µs. A "fast buffer" was also provided for storage of short loops and intermediate results (similar in concept to what is now called cache). The "fast buffer" access time was 0.25 µs
The word size was 52 bits. Floating-point numbers used a format with 7 bits of exponent (power of 4) and 45 bits of mantissa
Significand
The significand is part of a floating-point number, consisting of its significant digits. Depending on the interpretation of the exponent, the significand may represent an integer or a fraction.-Examples:...
. Instructions were either 26 bits or 13 bits long, allowing packing of up to 4 instructions per memory word. The pipelined functional units were called advanced control, delayed control, and interplay. The computer used Muller speed-independent circuitry (i.e. Muller C-Element) for a portion of the control circuitry.
In 1963 Donald B. Gillies
Donald B. Gillies
Donald Bruce Gillies was a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist, known for his work in game theory, computer design, and minicomputer programming environments.- Education :...
(who designed the control) used the ILLIAC II to find three Mersenne prime
Mersenne prime
In mathematics, a Mersenne number, named after Marin Mersenne , is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two: M_p=2^p-1.\,...
s, with 2917, 2993, and 3376 digits - the largest primes known at the time.
from Japan participated in the development program and designed the arithmetic logic unit
Arithmetic logic unit
In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
from September 1960.
ILLIAC III
The ILLIAC IIIILLIAC III
The ILLIAC III was a fine-grained SIMD pattern recognition computer built by the University of Illinois in 1966.This ILLIAC's initial task was image processing of bubble chamber experiments used to detect nuclear particles. Later it was used on biological images.The machine was destroyed in a fire,...
was a fine-grained SIMD
SIMD
Single instruction, multiple data , is a class of parallel computers in Flynn's taxonomy. It describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously...
pattern recognition computer built by the University of Illinois in 1966.
This ILLIAC's initial task was image processing of bubble chamber
Bubble chamber
A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. It was invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics...
experiments used to detect nuclear particles. Later it was used on biological images. The machine was destroyed in a fire, caused by a Variac shorting on one of the wooden-top benches, in 1968.
ILLIAC IV
The ILLIAC IVILLIAC IV
The ILLIAC IV was one of the most infamous supercomputers ever built. One of a series of research machines, the ILLIACs from the University of Illinois, the ILLIAC IV design featured fairly high parallelism with up to 256 processors, used to allow the machine to work on large data sets in what...
was one of the first attempts at a massively parallel computer. Key to the design was fairly high parallelism
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
with up to 256 processors, used to allow the machine to work on large data sets in what would later be known as vector processing
Vector processor
A vector processor, or array processor, is a central processing unit that implements an instruction set containing instructions that operate on one-dimensional arrays of data called vectors. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, whose instructions operate on single data items...
. ILLIAC IV relied on first and early second generation semiconductor technology, resulting in pull out 'cards' that were on the order of two feet square. The power supplies for the machine were so large that it required designing a single tongue fork lift to remove and reinstall the power supply. The power supply buss bars on the machine spanned distances greater than three feet, and were octopus-like in design. Thick copper, the busses were coated in epoxy that often cracked resulting in shorts and an array of other issues. ILLIAC IV was designed by Burroughs Corporation and built in quadrants in Great Valley, PA during the years of 1967 through 1972. The machine was built in quadrants, with the first quadrant delivered to the University of Illinois in the summer of 1972. The building in which the quadrants was built was designed such that the wall at the end of the building was built to be easily removed. The quadrant itself was built on a flat bed trailer; when ready to deliver, the wall was removed, a truck backed down and connected to the trailer, driving away for delivery. Successive quadrants were built and delivered to the University of Illinois, with the entire system finally ready for operation in 1976, after a decade of development. In addition to being massively parallel, by that time it was also massively late, massively over budget, and massively outperformed by existing commercial machines such as Cray-1
Cray-1
The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured, and marketed by Cray Research. The first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, and it went on to become one of the best known and most successful supercomputers in history...
.
CEDAR
CEDAR was a hierarchical shared-memory supercomputer completed in 1988. The development team was led by Professor David KuckDavid Kuck
David J. Kuck was a professor in the Computer Science Department the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1965 to 1993. He is the father of Olympic silver medalist Jonathan Kuck...
. This SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) system embodied advances in interconnection networks, control unit support of parallelism, optimizing compilers and parallel algorithms and applications. It is occasionally referred to as ILLIAC V.
ILLIAC 6
Design of the ILLIAC 6 began in early 2005 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign led by Luddy Harrison. It was intended as a 65536 node communications supercomputer utilizing commodity digital signal processors as the computation nodes. It was designed for over 1.2 quadrillion multiply-accumulate operations per second and a bi-sectional bandwidth of over 4 terabytes per second.Trusted ILLIAC
The Trusted ILLIAC was completed in 2006 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Coordinated Science Laboratory and Information Trust InstituteInformation Trust Institute
- History :The Information Trust Institute was founded in 2004 as an interdisciplinary unit designed to approach information security research from a systems perspective. It examines information security by looking at what makes machines, applications, and users trustworthy...
. It was a 256 node Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
cluster, with each node having two processors.
Trusted ILLIAC nodes contained onboard FPGAs to enable smart compilers and programming models, system assessment and validation, configurable trust mechanisms, automated fault management, on-line adaptation, and numerous other configurable trust frameworks. The nodes each had access to 8 GB memory on a 6.4 GB/s bus, and were connected via 8 GB/s PCI-Express to the FPGAs. A 2.5 GB/s InfiniBand
InfiniBand
InfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link used in high-performance computing and enterprise data centers. Its features include high throughput, low latency, quality of service and failover, and it is designed to be scalable...
network provides the internode connectivity. The system was constructed using the help and support of Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, AMD and Xilinx
Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. is a supplier of programmable logic devices. It is known for inventing the field programmable gate array and as the first semiconductor company with a fabless manufacturing model....
.
External links
- Oral history interview with Gene H. Golub. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. GolubGene H. GolubGene Howard Golub , Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, was one of the preeminent numerical analysts of his generation....
discusses the construction of the ILLIAC computer, the work of Ralph Meager and David Wheeler on the ILLIAC design; programming; and the early users of the ILLIAC at the University of Illinois. - Oral history interviews on ILLIAC computers. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Interviews include Herman H. Goldstine and relation to IAS computer; Stephen Lukasik and ARPA funding; David Wheeler who worked on ILLIAC and taught at Illinois 1951-53. - ILLIAC I Machine Language Programming Manual
- ILLIAC I Manuals
- ILLIAC II Manual
- ILLIAC VI web site
- Trusted ILLIAC web site