IBM 7030 Stretch

The IBM 7030, also known as stretch, is a supercomputer in the 700/7000 series of IBM. In 1961 he was delivered to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The initial price offer of 13.5 million dollars could not be held for extradition, since the projected performance was not achieved. The computer was then delivered for $ 7.78 million to customers who had already made an order, and excluded from the range. Although the 7030 was considerably slower than expected, it was still 1961 to 1964 the fastest computer in the world.

The machine was designed with a word length of 64 bits. In each memory bank 16,384 words could be addressed in the maximum configuration were 262,144 words ( 2 megabytes) available. With today's computer architecture of the computer is very difficult to compare, since binary and decimal fixed point numbers could be variable length from 1 to 64 bit, even on word boundaries, processed, as well as the alphanumeric visual representation was variable in " bytes" 1-8 bit width. The width of the command words was switched between 32 bit and 64 bit. Since he performed regularly the calculations in 64 bit, it counts as the first representative of a 64 - bit architecture. Addressing the smallest unit of the IBM 7030 is a machine word, but a single bit. That a 24 bit address is comprised of a 18 bit block for addressing a word in the main memory and of a 6 -bit block for addressing a bit in the word. This addressing scheme has not been enforced for practical disadvantages in later computer architectures.