6 ms·

Pioneers of Soviet Computing [pdf]

91 points by heyts 10y ago

unimpressive 10y ago
Read this years ago and loved it. Among the most memorable portions of the book for me is still the forward: "Bringing this manuscript to publication was an epic adventure in itself, so we decided to share our experience here, along with some commentary on academic publishing today and its inevitable demise." I've also quoted it before on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059080
glangdale 10y ago
Those working on regular expression matching or related tasks should be well aware of some of the names here, especially Victor Glushkov. We still use Glushkov's NFA construction (which dates to 1961 or earlier) in our regular expression matcher (Hyperscan). It was interesting to hear about what a major figure Glushkov was beyond his work on automata, which was all I really knew about.
erikj 10y ago
I don't see Valentin Turchin mentioned in the book which is a shame, he was arguably the Soviet counterpart to John McCarthy.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  A claim like that is better with links that show it. Especially if compared to John McCarthy. Show us what you have.
  - dottedmag 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      Neat. Thanks. Main thing I wanted to look at is in Springer. Ill have to dig up non-paywall stuff on him later. Especially the meta and supercompilation.
CalChris 10y ago
Kind've post-Soviet but there was a link between Elbrus (Boris Babayan) and Transmeta. https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/24/russian_merced_killer_firm_confirms/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/24/russian_merced_kill... I believe that Babayan was the originator of the Code Morphing idea. However, Ditzel had also done something earlier with CRISP at Bell Labs where complex instructions were translated/decoded into horizontal microcode instructions and cached, the precursor to the x86 μ-store. Translated != Compiled. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400837/the-software-chip/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400837/the-software-chip/ Babayan went on to work for Intel where he is now an Intel Fellow. https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/boris-a-babayan/ https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/boris-a-babayan/
- dom0 9y ago
  > Elbrus, VLIW, Transmeta, Intel It's interesting how much people Intel soaked up in the early 2000s after the RISCollapse and VLIW-gone. Sometimes I wonder where exactly Intel got all the money from for doing that and pushing through quite some years with inferior products.
rdtsc 10y ago
> By the late 1960s Lebedev, Glushkov,and their followers believed that Soviet scientists had accumulated a significant amount of experience in computer technology and had a considerable production potential. They wanted to collaborate with large Western European computer manufacturers in developing a fourth-generation machine before the Americans did. Lebedev’s political adversaries proposed a different option – to duplicate the American third-generation IBM-360 system, created several years earlier. Although no scientists of Lebedev’s caliber were among them, they were the political figures who had decision-making power. The Soviet government passed a resolution to develop a Unified System of Computers, reverse - engineered from the configurations of the IBM - 360. The history there takes a turn and after 70s they just started mostly copying Western machines. It was interesting how they would justify it to themselves copying the product of the "decadent and failing Western capitalism" while they also had to attend parades and sing songs to Lenin about how their country was at the forefront and leading the world to better and brighter future. However, to be fair, I also learned computers by using a crapy Soviet ZX Spectrum clone. So on a practical level copying became an obvious choice perhaps. At least it would have been soon enough. Also, I always liked Setun, the ternary computer. It ends in kind of a sad story though: > Unfortunately, after the Setun-70 project, Brusentsov’s lab was relocated from the Computer Center at Moscow University to a windowless attic in a student dormitory and was deprived of any serious support. The new university rector considered computer design a pseudo-science. Brusentsov’s original Setun computer, an experimental prototype that had faithfully worked for seventeen years, was barbarically destroyed and carted off to the dump.
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  Russian wikipedia https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ЕС_ЭВМ#cite_note-.D0.B8.D1.81.D1.82._.D0.BE.D0.B1.D0.B7.D0.BE.D1.80-1 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ЕС_ЭВМ#cite_note-.D0.B8.D1.81.... says that second generation soviet systems were oriented towards numerical computations and that they had a real problem with system software (no OS, even no assembler). Now the architecture/os/system of the IBM S360 took some money to develop - here it says it was 5 billion $ (comparable in magnitude to the moon program - that was 25 billion $) http://www.smashcompany.com/business/cost-overruns-and-the-ibm-360 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/cost-overruns-and-the-i... . So I guess that Kosygin was trying to avoid this expenditure. Therefore a major point is that software development costs a lot, and they could just pirate that by copying the OS360. On the other hand they could have done a similar thing as Amdahl/Siemens/Hitachi - copy the architecture while producing a hardware design of their own, so go figure.
scentoni 9y ago
See the Agat, a Soviet Apple II clone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)#Reception https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-11/1984_11_BYTE_09-12_New_Chips#page/n135/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-11/1984_11_BYT...
dottedmag 9y ago
Original Russian text: http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/MALINOWSKIJ/0.htm http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/MALINOWSKIJ/0.htm
stevespang 9y ago
The link you furnish: http://www.sigcis.org/files/sigcismc2010_001.pdf http://www.sigcis.org/files/sigcismc2010_001.pdf IS DEAD.

91 points by heyts 10y ago

Read this years ago and loved it. Among the most memorable portions of the book for me is still the forward: "Bringing this manuscript to publication was an epic adventure in itself, so we decided to share our experience here, along with some commentary on academic publishing today and its inevitable demise." I've also quoted it before on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059080

glangdale 10y ago

Those working on regular expression matching or related tasks should be well aware of some of the names here, especially Victor Glushkov. We still use Glushkov's NFA construction (which dates to 1961 or earlier) in our regular expression matcher (Hyperscan). It was interesting to hear about what a major figure Glushkov was beyond his work on automata, which was all I really knew about.

erikj 10y ago

I don't see Valentin Turchin mentioned in the book which is a shame, he was arguably the Soviet counterpart to John McCarthy.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
A claim like that is better with links that show it. Especially if compared to John McCarthy. Show us what you have.
- dottedmag 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    Neat. Thanks. Main thing I wanted to look at is in Springer. Ill have to dig up non-paywall stuff on him later. Especially the meta and supercompilation.

CalChris 10y ago

Kind've post-Soviet but there was a link between Elbrus (Boris Babayan) and Transmeta. https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/24/russian_merced_killer_firm_confirms/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/24/russian_merced_kill... I believe that Babayan was the originator of the Code Morphing idea. However, Ditzel had also done something earlier with CRISP at Bell Labs where complex instructions were translated/decoded into horizontal microcode instructions and cached, the precursor to the x86 μ-store. Translated != Compiled. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400837/the-software-chip/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400837/the-software-chip/ Babayan went on to work for Intel where he is now an Intel Fellow. https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/boris-a-babayan/ https://newsroom.intel.com/biography/boris-a-babayan/

dom0 9y ago
> Elbrus, VLIW, Transmeta, Intel It's interesting how much people Intel soaked up in the early 2000s after the RISCollapse and VLIW-gone. Sometimes I wonder where exactly Intel got all the money from for doing that and pushing through quite some years with inferior products.

rdtsc 10y ago

> By the late 1960s Lebedev, Glushkov,and their followers believed that Soviet scientists had accumulated a significant amount of experience in computer technology and had a considerable production potential. They wanted to collaborate with large Western European computer manufacturers in developing a fourth-generation machine before the Americans did. Lebedev’s political adversaries proposed a different option – to duplicate the American third-generation IBM-360 system, created several years earlier. Although no scientists of Lebedev’s caliber were among them, they were the political figures who had decision-making power. The Soviet government passed a resolution to develop a Unified System of Computers, reverse - engineered from the configurations of the IBM - 360. The history there takes a turn and after 70s they just started mostly copying Western machines. It was interesting how they would justify it to themselves copying the product of the "decadent and failing Western capitalism" while they also had to attend parades and sing songs to Lenin about how their country was at the forefront and leading the world to better and brighter future. However, to be fair, I also learned computers by using a crapy Soviet ZX Spectrum clone. So on a practical level copying became an obvious choice perhaps. At least it would have been soon enough. Also, I always liked Setun, the ternary computer. It ends in kind of a sad story though: > Unfortunately, after the Setun-70 project, Brusentsov’s lab was relocated from the Computer Center at Moscow University to a windowless attic in a student dormitory and was deprived of any serious support. The new university rector considered computer design a pseudo-science. Brusentsov’s original Setun computer, an experimental prototype that had faithfully worked for seventeen years, was barbarically destroyed and carted off to the dump.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago
Russian wikipedia https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ЕС_ЭВМ#cite_note-.D0.B8.D1.81.D1.82._.D0.BE.D0.B1.D0.B7.D0.BE.D1.80-1 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ЕС_ЭВМ#cite_note-.D0.B8.D1.81.... says that second generation soviet systems were oriented towards numerical computations and that they had a real problem with system software (no OS, even no assembler). Now the architecture/os/system of the IBM S360 took some money to develop - here it says it was 5 billion $ (comparable in magnitude to the moon program - that was 25 billion $) http://www.smashcompany.com/business/cost-overruns-and-the-ibm-360 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/cost-overruns-and-the-i... . So I guess that Kosygin was trying to avoid this expenditure. Therefore a major point is that software development costs a lot, and they could just pirate that by copying the OS360. On the other hand they could have done a similar thing as Amdahl/Siemens/Hitachi - copy the architecture while producing a hardware design of their own, so go figure.

scentoni 9y ago

See the Agat, a Soviet Apple II clone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)#Reception https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-11/1984_11_BYTE_09-12_New_Chips#page/n135/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-11/1984_11_BYT...

dottedmag 9y ago

Original Russian text: http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/MALINOWSKIJ/0.htm http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/MALINOWSKIJ/0.htm

stevespang 9y ago

The link you furnish: http://www.sigcis.org/files/sigcismc2010_001.pdf http://www.sigcis.org/files/sigcismc2010_001.pdf IS DEAD.