Architecture
The equipment added to the Stretch computer consisted of the following special peripherals:
- IBM 7951 - Stream coprocessor
- IBM 7952 - High performance core storage
- IBM 7955 - Magnetic tape system also known as Tractor
- IBM 7959 - High speed I/O exchange
With the stream processing unit, Harvest was able to process 3 million characters a second.
The Tractor tape system which was part of the Harvest system was unique for its time. It included six tape drives which handled 1.75-inch-wide (44 mm) tape in cartridges, along with a library mechanism which could fetch a cartridge from a library, mount it on a drive, and restore it in the library. The transfer rates and library mechanism were balanced in performance such that the system could read two streams of data from tape, and write a third, for the entire capacity of the library, without any time wasted for tape handling.
Read more about this topic: IBM 7950 Harvest
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider, and should be wise in season and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)