What happened to IBM?
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Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#12What happened to IBM?
They had vertical integration and made bank. Then each layer got more complex as computing became mainstream, and IBM got out-competed on everyone of them by specialized companies. And then they sold them off. The only layer that remains is the most strategic: the customer relationship. IBM is now just a consultancy.
> IBM is now just a consultancy.
Except that they own Red Hat
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#13What happened to IBM?
They had vertical integration and made bank. Then each layer got more complex as computing became mainstream, and IBM got out-competed on everyone of them by specialized companies. And then they sold them off. The only layer that remains is the most strategic: the customer relationship. IBM is now just a consultancy.
Not much is left of the great IBM, but their Z architecture is still superior when it comes to reliability at scale.
In fact, "what happened to IBM?", they were in the news recently: https://wccftech.com/ibm-worlds-first-dual-architecture-proc...
Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#14As the article belatedly mentions, the ~40 GB automated tape library for HARVEST was the bee's knees... and possibly the inspiration for "harvest now, encrypt later". PS – Primary sources for the IBM 7950/HARVEST on Bitsavers, excellent as always: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7950/
Decrypt later, I suppose.
Ouch, that was indeed a typo...
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#15[dead]
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#16Cold War era computing is fascinating. The scale they achieved with 1960s technology is impressive.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#17Cold War era computing is fascinating. The scale they achieved with 1960s technology is impressive.
You'll want to read about SAGE
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#18What happened to IBM?
They royally screwed up by signing an exclusive deal with the back-then no-name Microsoft company. IBM created the 3 trillion behemoth that Microsoft is while killing themselves in the process.
It's really sad but also infuriating: had IBM not fucked up and not signed Microsoft, that mediocre company that Microsoft is would have gone nowhere and we wouldn't have to suffer their turds since decades.
P.S: in their dying breath (and I know IBM still exists), they did commit one billion dollar to Linux early on (which back then was a big deal). When we see the tens of billions of devices that now run Linux, IBM at least partially participated in Linux taking over the world. So there's that.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had vertical integration and made bank. Then each layer got more complex as computing became mainstream, and IBM got out-competed on everyone of them by specialized companies. And then they sold them off. The only layer that remains is the most strategic: the customer relationship. IBM is now just a consultancy.
Not much is left of the great IBM, but their Z architecture is still superior when it comes to reliability at scale. In fact, "what happened to IBM?", they were in the news recently: https://wccftech.com/ibm-worlds-first-dual-architecture-proc... Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU.
> Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU.
World's first? What about the VIA C3 (or earlier NEC V20)? I'm sure there are more / earlier ones.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not much is left of the great IBM, but their Z architecture is still superior when it comes to reliability at scale. In fact, "what happened to IBM?", they were in the news recently: https://wccftech.com/ibm-worlds-first-dual-architecture-proc... Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU.
> Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU. World's first? What about the VIA C3 (or earlier NEC V20)? I'm sure there are more / earlier ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Instruction_Set
That's not the same thing, it's more like a hidden feature than the ISA of an entirely different CPU.