Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
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Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#2What happened to IBM?
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#3That one job was to process "sensitive" intelligence intercepts and break codes, if you're not grabbed by the clickbait headline. It's a good read.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#4As 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:
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#5What happened to IBM?
They became NSC, no such company.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#6What happened to IBM?
Sometime in the 90s they decided that becoming a services and consultancy provider was more important than being involved in large-scale commodity hardware or really anything else.
Over three decades they've exited commodity hardware (x-series and thinkpads), retreated from a lot of software stuff and generally gone as hard as they can for large-scale business contracts. They seem to keep a decent amount of cutting-edge hardware research going, Power is still broadly competitive with x86 AFAICT, but the volumes have got to be pretty low these days and I half suspect that some of it is just a "Hey look at us we're still here" play rather than actually feeding into products, because services are the profit-centre.
They're still huge and have a lot of money, and they own Redhat. But IMHO it's in a long, slow decline, and it has stepped back from the public eye and most public-facing markets.
Context - I've worked for them in a few places. Obvs my opinons are my own, especially as I've been 'out' for over a decade at this point.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#7What 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.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#8As 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.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#9What 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.
They still produce the mainframe hardware ranges though.
Re: Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War
#10What 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.
I think that's a little simplistic/reductive.
In some areas IBM still holds if not a technological advantage at least the first among equals position, they just aren't areas that are flashy or generally known outside of folks like us - Mainframes and related technologies for example, the IBM Z series is still a huge player there.
They are also a consultancy though.