History of IBM Developments

1956 - FIRST MAGNETIC HARD DISK. IBM introduces the world's first magnetic hard disk for data storage. RAMAC (or Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) offers unprecedented performance by permitting random access to any of the million characters distributed over both sides of 50 two-foot-diameter disks. Produced in San Jose, California, IBM's first hard disk stored about 2,000 bits of data per square inch and had a purchase price of about $10,000 per megabyte. By 1997, the cost of storing a megabyte had dropped to around ten cents.

1957 - FORTRAN. IBM revolutionizes programming with the introduction of FORTRAN (Formula Translator). Created by John Backus, it soon becomes the most widely used computer programming language for technical work. For the first time, engineers and scientists can write computer programs in more natural forms, such as C=A/B rather than as strings of "machine language: 1s and 0s.

1997 - DEEP BLUE. The 32-node IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, Deep Blue, defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in the first known instance of a computer vanquishing a world champion chess player in tournament-style competition. Also after years of teamwork among Research and Microelectronics divisions, IBM introduced the CMOS 7S process, which allowed manufacturers to use copper wires to link transistors in computer chips instead of relying on traditional aluminum interconnects; a revolutionary advance in semiconductor technology.



Saturday, June 30, 2012

Jason Ziller on Intel's Thunderbolt


For Intel, the challenge with Thunderbolt will be how to make it competitive with USB 3.0. The introduction of Thunderbolt has followed many of the same steps of FireWire – a protocol that has been having an extended funeral after continuing to loose its market share and device support year-over-year to USB 2.0.
Intel’s director of marketing, Jason Ziller, isn’t overly worried about Thunderbolt following the path of FireWire.
“We expect Thunderbolt to be complementary to USB 3.0,” he said at Computex press conference. “We expect to see them co-existing on PCs. When you have them both, you really don’t need anything else.”

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  • GbakmarsCollapse
    One has to ask the question when it comes to the somewhat strange introduction of "Thunderbolt" to hardware such as motherboards, for as of yet there isn't a person in the typical American home that owns one single item that is Thunderbolt dependent, enhanced, or in need of the speed it offers.
    Ironically "thunder" is something that is a "byproduct" of an electrical discharge that takes place in the atmosphere and although it is just too difficult for the human eye to keep up with the speed, the separation of + and - charges results in a flash of intense electrical activity producing enormous amounts of heat and it begins from the ground up. There is a rapid heating and thus an expansion of the atmosphere which sends air hurtling through the atmosphere at enormous speeds resulting in a loud boom as the has moving air comes into contact with our ear drums. But the real phenomenon is the incredible display of light as oppositely charged particles can no longer stand to be separated from each other.
    Is it possibly prophetic that the item that Intel is bragging about, because it wasn't named "Lightning bolt", is destined to be another fire wire? I can't tell you how difficult it was to get Firewire 800 installed on my PC a few years ago, until I finally found a company called Unibrain. Most PC people didn't even know what IEEE 1394b was and the PC OEM's like Dell never even considered it to be an option for their PC sales.
    Why was only Mac big on fire wire technology? And if only Mac has a Thunderbolt connection to its monitors are we saying that the past 5 years of Monster HDMI cables, followed by a Display Port cable that was seldom found on display are going to be replaced by a technology that Mac has been using for some time, just as they were the only ones relying heavily on improving Firewire speed?
    I don't think so. Thunderbolt has one purpose and only one purpose and you saw the perfect example of its purpose used to an extreme when Asus came out with their V Premium that should have been "famous" for Asus finally being honest with its customers and letting them know that the V Pro and V Deluxe were a 16 lane shadily advertised disappointment of a motherboard, and V Premium was in fact bringing something much greater than a bolt of thunder to the enthusiast community; they were bring the possibility of X16/X16 or X16/X8/X8 or the crown jewel of gaming-quad sli with X8/X8/X8/x8. But even with this major break though thanks to the PLX hack, you still have to ask, 'if 3.0 is twice 2.0, but we have to cut 3.0 in half, than is are quad really nothing more than the equivalent of quad sli in 2.0?
    So why the timely addition to a bunch of failures of Z77 motherboards; add a feature that is like buying a CD player before there are CD’s, and only talk about Thunderbolt and ignore the greatest break though,(or should I say the first honest provision of a technology that was withheld in the first round of the majority of Z77 boards ( exceptions being the $400 boards like the Rampage IV Extreme)?
    You can’t attend a big event where everyone is strutting their “latest and greatest” and not be able to announce that we are going to get to transfer information 20 times faster than USB 2.0; granted none of us have anything in our possession that we can plug such a cable into. And we have no assurance that just because someone is slinging around a cable that is: how does this sound- only 2 times faster than USB 3.0, the reality is that no one may want it because it means that all of those new USB 3.0 items we have gotten all excited about would have to be rejected in preference to a “dream” of the kind where “lightning only strikes one”.
    As of now people are still finally finding reliable and honestly priced HDMI cables. USB 3.0 is still found only on portable hard drives and it is taking quite some time for it to become a household name. eSATA has proven to be 6GB/sec and is very handing and being used in Networks and transfers to external hard drives. And what is the real deal with Display Port? I have my doubts as it doesn’t really claim the speeds and bandwidth of HDMI that is now up to 20GB. Display Port may be exactly as the name implies; it will be an invention that will be placed on display at the Computer Hall of Fame, filed under “underachievers”.
    If this new cable is going to change computing as we know it than I suggest that we change the name to "Lightning Bolt"?
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