TheIBM 7090 is a second-generationtransistorized version of the earlierIBM 709 vacuum tubemainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of theIBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation was in December 1959.[1] In 1960, a typical system sold for $2.9 million (equivalent to $23 million in 2024) or could be rented for $63,500 a month (equivalent to $501,000 in 2023).
The 7090 uses a36-bitword length, with an address space of 32,768 words (15-bit addresses).[2] It operates with a basic memory cycle of 2.18 μs, using theIBM 7302 Core Storagecore memory technology from theIBM 7030 (Stretch) project.
With a processing speed of around 100Kflop/s,[3] the 7090 is six times faster than the 709, and could be rented for half the price.[4] 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 Both the 7090 and the 7094 were withdrawn from sale on July 14, 1969, but systems remained in service for more than a decade after.[5][6] In 1961, the IBM 7094 famously employed a speech synthesis program to sing "Daisy Bell", becoming something of acultural icon.
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 (fortransistorized), 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).[citation needed]
IBM 7151-2 Console Control Unit for 7094 showing additional index register displays in a distinctive extra box on top. Note "Multiple Tag Mode" light in the top center.
An upgraded version, theIBM 7094, was first installed in September 1962. It has sevenindex registers, instead of three on the earlier machines. The 7151-2 Console Control Unit for the 7094 has a distinctive box on top that displays lights for the four new index registers.[7] The 7094 introduced double-precision floating point and additionalinstructions, but largely maintainedbackward compatibility with the 7090. Although the 7094 has four more index registers than the 709 and 7090, at power-on time it is inmultiple tag mode,[8]: 8 compatible with the 709 and 7090, and requires aLeave Multiple Tag Mode[8]: 56 instruction in order to enterseven index register mode and use all seven index registers. In multiple tag mode, when more than one bit is set in the tag field, the contents of the two or three selected index registers are logicallyORed, notadded, together, before the decrement takes place. In seven index register mode, if the three-bit tag field is not zero, it selects just one of seven index registers, however, the program can return to multiple tag mode with the instructionEnter Multiple Tag Mode,[8]: 55 restoring 7090 compatibility.
In April 1964, the first7094 II was installed, which had almost twice as much general speed as the 7094 due to a fasterclock cycle, dual memory banks and improved overlap of instruction execution, an early instance ofpipelined design.[9]
The IBM 7094 was the first computer to fully sing a song using only synthesizers.
In 1963, IBM introduced two new, lower cost machines called theIBM 7040 and 7044. They have a 36-bit architecture based on the 7090, but with some instructions omitted or optional, and simplified input/output that allows the use of more modern, higher performance peripherals from theIBM 1400 series.
The7094/7044 Direct Coupled System (DCS) was initially developed by an IBM customer, theAerospace Corporation, seeking greater cost efficiency and scheduling flexibility than IBM's IBSYS tape operating system provided. DCS used a less expensive IBM 7044 to handleinput/output (I/O) with the 7094 performing mostly computation. Aerospace developed the Direct Couple operating system, an extension to IBSYS, which was shared with other IBM customers. IBM later introduced the DCS as a product.[10][11]
The basic instruction formats were the same as theIBM 709:
A three-bit opcode (prefix), 15-bitdecrement (D), three-bittag (T), and 15-bitaddress (Y)
A twelve-bit opcode, two-bitflag (F), four unused bits, three-bittag (T), and 15-bitaddress (Y)
Variations of the above with different allocation of bits 12-17 or different allocations of bits 18-35
The documentation of opcodes used signed octal. The flag field indicated whether to use indirect addressing or not. The decrement field often contained an immediate operand to modify the results of the operation, or was used to further define the instruction type. The tag field might describe an index register to be operated on, or be used as described below. The Y field might contain an address, an immediate operand or an opcode modifier. For instructions where the tag field indicated indexing, the operation was
T=0
use Y
7090
form the logical or of the selected index registers and subtract from Y
7094 in multiple tag mode (power-on default)
same as 7090
7094 in seven index register mode
subtract the index register from Y
If there was no F field or F is not all one bits, then the above was theeffective address. Otherwise it was anindirect effective address; i.e., fetch the word at that location and treat the T and Y fields as described above.
Single-precisionfloating-point numbers had a magnitude sign, an eight-bit excess-128 exponent and a 27-bit magnitude (numbers were binary, rather than the hexadecimal format introduced later forSystem/360)
Double-precision floating-point numbers, introduced on the 7094, had a magnitude sign, an eight-bit excess-128 exponent, and a 54-bit magnitude. The double-precision number was stored in memory in an even-odd pair of consecutive words; the sign and exponent in the second word were ignored when the number was used as an operand.
Alphanumeric characters were six-bitBCD, packed six to a word.
Octal notation was used in documentation and programming; console displays lights and switches were grouped into three-bit fields for easy conversion to and from octal.
An IBM 7090 at the NASAAmes Research Center in 1961, with the director of Ames and several IBM employees. The IBM 7151 Console Control Unit is on the right with two banks ofIBM 729 magnetic tape drives in back. TheIBM 711 card reader is in front of the man and woman at right.
The 7090 series features a data channel architecture for input and output, a forerunner of moderndirect memory access I/O. Up to eight data channels can be attached, with up to tenIBM 729 tape drives attached to each channel. The data channels have their own very limited set of operations called commands. These are used with tape (and later, disk) storage as well as card units and printers, and offered high performance for the time. Printing andpunched card I/O, however, employed the same modifiedunit record equipment introduced with the 704 and was slow. It became common to use a less expensiveIBM 1401 computer to read cards ontomagnetic tape for transfer to the 7090/94. Output would be written onto tape and transferred to the 1401 for printing or card punching using its much faster peripherals, notably theIBM 1403 line printer.
Later IBM introduced the7094/7044 Direct Coupled System; the 7044 handledspooling between its fast 1400-series peripherals and 1301 or 1302 disk files, and used data channel to data channel communication as the 7094's interface to spooled data, with the 7094 primarily performing computations. There is also a 7090/7040 DCS.
The 7090 and 7094 machines were quite successful for their time, and had a widevariety of software provided for them by IBM. In addition, there was a very active user community within the user organization,SHARE.
IBSYS is a "heavy duty" production operating system with numerous subsystem and language support options, among themFORTRAN,COBOL, SORT/MERGE, the MAP assembler, and others.
FMS, theFortran Monitor System, was a more lightweight but still very effective system optimized for batch FORTRAN and assembler programming. The assembler provided, FAP, (FORTRAN Assembly Program), was somewhat less complete than MAP, but provided excellent capabilities for the era. FMS also incorporated a considerably enhanced derivative of the FORTRAN compiler originally written for the 704 by Backus and his team.
TheCompatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), the first general purposetime-sharing operating system,[15] developed atMIT's Computation Center on three successive computers, an IBM 709, 7090 and 7094 withRPQs for additional features. It eventually ran on two separate 7094s, one of them atProject MAC.[16][17][18]
It was the first computer to sing, singing "Daisy Bell".
Caltech/NASAJet Propulsion Laboratory had three 7094s in the Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF, building 230), fed via tape using several 1401s, and two 7094/7044 direct-coupled systems (in buildings 125 and 156).[under discussion]
On February 13, 1961, an IBM 7090 was installed at the Woomera Long Range Weapons Establishment in Southern Australia.[21][22]
In 1962, a pair of 7090s inBriarcliff Manor, New York, were the basis for the original version of theSABRE airlines reservation system introduced by American Airlines.
In 1963, three 7090 systems were imported into and installed in Japan, one each at Mitsubishi Nuclear Power Co. (whose DP division later merged withMitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.), IBM Japan'sdata center inTokyo, andToshiba inKawasaki. They were mainly used for scientific computing.
In 1964, an early version ofTRACE, a high-precisionorbit determination and orbit propagation program, was used on an IBM 7090 computer.[24]
Operation Match, the first computer dating service in the U.S., begun in 1965, used a 7090 at the Avco service bureau in Wilmington, Massachusetts.[25]
In 1967, Roger N. Shepard adapted M.V. Mathews' algorithm using an IBM 7090 to synthesizeShepard tones.[26]
American composerGerald Strang used the 7090/7094 for his series of works under the titleCompusition, composed between 1969 and 1972 atBell Labs.
The US Air Force retired its last 7090s in service from theBallistic Missile Early Warning System ("BMEWS") in the 1980s after almost 30 years of use. 7090 serial number 1 and serial number 3 were installed atThule Air Base inGreenland for this application.
^Singh, Jai P.; Morgan, Robert P. (October 1971).Educational Computer Utilization and Computer Communications(PDF) (Report). St. Louis, MO: Washington University. p. 13. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Grant No. Y/NGL-26-008-054. RetrievedMarch 8, 2022.Much of the early development in the time-sharing field took place on university campuses.8 Notable examples are the CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) at MIT, which was the first general purpose time-sharing system...
^Morton, Peter (1989).Fire Across the Desert: Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946-1980. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.ISBN0644475005.
IBM 7090 Music From MathematicsArchived February 5, 2012, at theWayback Machine recorded in 1960 by Bell Labs, using the "Digital to Sound Transducer" to realize several traditional and original compositions; this album contains the original Daisy (Bicycle Built for Two).
