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A Tour of Soviet Supercomputing (1996)

• tjic 17y ago
  No pictures? :-(
  • nearestneighbor 17y ago
    http://www.mailcom.com/besm6/ http://www.mailcom.com/besm6/
• zandorg 17y ago
  I don't get the comment feeling sorry for the technicians at this machine's shortcomings. It's good that Intel etc didn't help this power hungry superpower to take over the world as they wanted to.
  • asciilifeform 17y ago
    So, the other power-hungry superpower took over the world. Ask the Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. how they like it. And eventually ask yourself - after the consumerism bubble pops / the petrocollapse takes place.
• thstart 17y ago
  This is a joke. All of these CoCom banned clones were all made like "a hybrid germanium/silicon discrete component transistor system emulating IC". Actually one board full of components was emulating just one IC. Imagine how big they were, how much power it consumed. The big noisy fans so loud you cannot sit in the room and work. The speed - how much speed you can get from a discrete component emulation of an IC? The process worked like this: some Eastern European country "institute" working as a front for a soviet "institute" was ordering a components needed to assemble one computer or luckily got an assembled computer via diplomatic sources. The applications and compilers delivered via other independent "sources" like visiting professors in California. Then the hardware was reverse engineered. Because there were not existing IC production - one IC has to be emulated by one board. Then after months if it worked, the applications, compilers were cyrilized and delivered to the big eastern country. The big eastern country then was able prove you know what. This is the way it worked. It was hardly a threat to the West. Almost no original work actually.