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Information Technology (IT) Pioneers

Retirees and former employees of Unisys, Lockheed Martin, and their heritage companies

32-bit Computers, Chapter 55

1. Introduction

The LEGACY computers are listed by Instruction Set Architecture bit length because the ISA established a thread of commonality and similarity through a line of systems. This led to commonality of support software, experienced programmers, and commonality of maintenance engineer knowledge, and customer confidence in operational reliability. [lab]

2. Computer Family

AN/UYK-7, AN/AYK-10, CP-140, and AN/UYK-43. These computers had a bootstrap (core rope) designed-in diagnostic capability, see the AN/UYK-7 NDRO function card. The AN/UYK-43 had a designed in maintenance processor.

Note that the Nike Tactical Intercept Computer (TIC) and the CLC successor were 32 bits also, but a different ISA than the above Navy computers. Those are discussed on the Computers, Special Purpose - Chapter 58.

3. Computer Descriptions

3.1 AN/UYK-7

The project started April 1968, first delivery 4/21/1969.
    The AN/UYK-7 standard shipboard computer was designed in accordance with stringent military specifications as to performance and ruggedness. The U.S. Navy was the developing government agency. The architecture came out of a study by UNIVAC; Another Computer Was Born by Curt Christensen.

    The AN/UYK-7 became the heart of the second generation NTDS system, replacing the aging 20Bs while implementing an architecture capable of supporting multiple I/O controllers and having multiple processors sharing memory and software tasks. Innovations in this design are numerous, i.e. an eight port memory that allowed three processors and two I/O controllers to be accessing memory concurrently as long as the address requests were to different memory banks. The first enhancement to the AN/UYK-7 was the implementation of a film memory chassis which created a 32k word memory in the same volume as the initial 16-k core memory chassis. The film memory technology was adapted from the AN/AYK-10's memory design. Each memory chassis had eight memory buses. In a multi-processor configuration; three instruction fetches, three operand fetches, and two I/O word transfers could take place simultaneous if all were referencing different memory banks.
    The UYK-7 design used the heat sink, T-bar card design and heat exchanger design from the CP-901. The integrated circuit flat packages were mounted onto a conductor which carried chip heat to the T-bar at the top. When inserted into chassis, a heat exchanger plate was clamped to the chassis. Air forced through the heat exchanger cooled the unit. The typical operating temperature of components on this card type was 30 degrees above ambient.
    The lead logic designer from the CP-901, Ken Oehlers, also became the lead processor designer for the UYK-7.  John Bonnes also joined the design team for this computer as the CP-901 checkout lead was taken over by Lowell Benson. A common executive program facilitated operational programming. [lab]

Comments From: Rick Orozco via web site on 23 January, 2009.
Hi, Thank you for the interesting web site. I was a UYK-7 computer tech for the US Navy from 1989-2000. I enjoyed learning the system inside and out and was a fairly good programmer in machine language. On the USS John Rodgers DD-983, we had a "spare" stand alone bay, which I actually wrote about a 10,000 line word processing program for use at our teletype. Of course this was right before the introduction of the PC, so it came in handy.

I also worked on the CP-642 when stationed onboard the USS Midway CV-41. In fact, in the picture of the SINS computer on your web site, you can still see my notes for reloading the computer, the little white index card posted on the control panel. {Editor's note: see section 3.6 of Computers, 30-bit.} Thanks to the many great engineers and programmers that created these systems and helped to make our military the best in the world. Rick Orozco, Chief Data Systems Technician, US Navy Retired

3.2 Unisys Type 1832, AN/AYK-10

Also called the S-3A computer, the nomenclature of the airplane it was designed to fit into.
    This project started in 1969 with first delivery September 14, 1970. The AN/AYK-10 is a dual processor, dual I/O controller airborne version of the UYK-7 ISA with special I/O used for ASW missions aboard the Lockheed S-3A carrier based aircraft. Innovations of this design: 1) dual mated film memory chassis running at 1.5 microseconds - each with 6 access ports. 2) a dual processor design interconnected so that if one CPU or one memory chassis or one I/O chassis failed, the system would continue to operate in a reduced capacity mode. Thus a reduced flight mission could continue - maybe just track 3 sono-buoys instead of 6 to 8, etc. 3) a unique frame design that fit at the rear of the S-3A crew compartment - the wheels folded up almost against the sides of the Power Supply and third memory drawer.

    Don Mager was the project engineer, Gary Bosworth and Gerry Shaw were two of the logic design engineers on this project. The operational software was developed by Sperry at the Valencia operations building. The first computer was delivered on 9/14/1970. There were a total of 205 of these computers built, including those for the CP-140. [lab]
    Photo submitted by Jim Rapinac. Sperry Univac DSD attendees, L-R present at the first aircraft roll-out were:

  • Jim Rapinac, General Manager, Special Programs, Salt Lake City
  • Bill McGowan, Marketing Rep, LA office
  • Ernie Hams, VP Program Management
  • Dick Gehring, VP and General Manager in St. Paul
  • Ken Oehlers, S-3A Engineering Director
  • Dan Brophy, S-3A Program Manager
  • Dewaine Osman, VP Marketing
  • John Spearing, DSD Valencia Site Manager
  • Norbert Kielbach, Marketing Rep, LA office

Feedback to webmaster:

I just finished a biography on Lockheed and then read a pdf report titled "50 Years of Ocean Surveillance" edited by Lowell A. Benson (no idea how I got that on my phone). I can relate a lot to what I read. I was never aware of your group and what you are doing. {Editor's note: http://vipclubmn.org/Articles/OceanSurveillance.pdf}
I worked for Lockheed in Burbank, CA and was developing automatic testing programs for the S-3A computer and spectrum analyzer starting in 1972 at the Rye Canyon Research Facility in Valencia, CA. By the mid 1970's I was transferred to Lockheed's Advanced Design Group where I had opportunities to develop and test algorithms for detecting and tracking of submarines. I remember having to punch my own cards and feed them into a UNIVAC system to compile the assembly code. The room had to be freezing cold in the 1960's otherwise the UNIVAC computer would overheat and crash. The compiled code was written out onto paper tape which was used to feed into an S-3A mock-up system in the lab on which I could test out my ideas. I usually had to go to the lab during the night so I had the system all to myself, getting home around 5 am after having been working all day. Jerry Ehlers, PhD  [feedback item added 12/21/2020]

3.3 The CP-140

This is the Canadian Patrol aircraft developed for their Aurora program. It is essentially the Canadian version of the P-3C for their ASW missions. Instead of the CP-901 computer, it used the Sperry 1832 three memory chassis instead of the two used aboard the US Navy's S-3A. The Canadian government nomenclature assigned to this machine was AN/AYK-502, not to be confused with the later AN/UYK-502 shipboard mini-computer.

The Canadians were instrumental in providing funding for the development of a semi-conductor memory chassis for this computer as a replacement for the aging mated film memory. These new memory chassis were manufactured at the Winnipeg facility and sub-sequentially back fitted into the S-3 airplanes by the US Navy. [lab]

3.4 S-3B Systems Computer

The Type 1832 (AN/AYK-10) enhanced version implemented a doubled capacity semiconductor memory chassis [designed for the Canadian AN/AYK-502] to upgrade the original film memory drawers.
 The aircraft nomenclature was upgraded to S-3B because Sperry Univac also did a design update to the Input/Output Controllers to effect a Harpoon missile launch capability. The four 6" x 6" PC cards weighed just 3 lb. instead of the MacDonald Douglas 40 lb. launch computer used aboard the P-3C. The power consumption of this feature was an additional 5 watts compared to the 200 watts of the stand-alone launch computer on the P-3C. Gerry Shaw, Gary Bosworth, and I did the technical work on the proposal. When we received the contract; Ken Graber and Mark Nelson did most of the logic and electrical design of the launch interface.
    Especially tricky was the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis which Mark did. He had to determine how the failure of any component would manifest itself, i.e. not allow the system to launch or accidently launch the missile. No single component failure could launch! Good job with the design Mark and Ken. [lab]

 

3.5 AN/UYK-43

 The AN/UYK-43 is the third generation (USQ-20 [1st] to UYK-7 [2nd] to UYK-43) NTDS computer and was specified as the emerging AN/UYK-7 replacement. It was conceived by the Navy’s engineers in NAVELEX, Washington, and numerous Navy laboratories around the country. A competitive solicitation and eventual “fly-off” was conducted between the two premier computer developers at the time, IBM and Sperry Univac. The development and production contract was won by Sperry Univac in 1981, eventually becoming UNISYS/Loral/Lockheed Martin. Univac had also provided the computers for the first two generations starting with responding to the Navy’s requirements in the 1950’s for a general purpose, real-time, shipboard, multi-purpose, programmable computer, the USQ-20. The UYK-43’s innovations included a designed-in maintenance processor*, cache memory for performance enhancements, plug-in NATO Serial interface, instruction set architecture (ISA) improvements, fault/failure tolerance, and numerous manufacturing innovations. Much of the logic design was implemented using Gate Array technologies. Many of these innovations pushed the available state-of-the-art beyond what was previously available. Even though its basic architecture and design was complete over 30 years ago, it is still performing in multiple mission critical combat systems throughout the surface and sub-surface Navy today. [John Westergren]

*The maintenance processor was the result of an Internal Research & Development project. [lab]

A bit of irony is that in the late 70s, UYK-7 enhancement studies project contracted with two University of Minnesota professors, Dr. Peter Paton and Dr. Bill Franta, to do cache memory performance studies. They used Fortran software executing on the CDC 1604 to obtain performance results for several cache architecture designs. These studies provided data to help design the AN/UYK-43 system and to solve a subsequent cache memory 'I/O flushing' problem in the commercial 1110 computer series. Lowell Benson was the engineering manager responsible for interfacing with the University. Dave Kaminski was the lead design engineer - he later was one of the AN/UYK-43 design engineers. [lab]

In situations when an incoming missile or aircraft are threatening a vessel, micro-seconds become critical. Making timely, accurate, quick decisions save lives. Much of the UYK-43’s design of each of the below areas were performed in concert to achieve that real-time response.

Packaging: Since the UYK-43 was destined to become the Navy’s standard computer for multiple systems, it needed to be easily installed on both surface ships and submarines. The submarine requirement caused the unit to the physical size to fit through a standard submarine hatch and was subsequently loaded on many vessels similarly like a torpedo. This single requirement demanded a number of innovated packaging approaches be taken with eventual manufacturing and production challenges, each meeting the Navy’s requirements of the day.

Cooling: The dense packaging of electronics in the UYK-43 enclosure generated a huge amount of heat. The most efficient method of removing that heat from the unit was through a complex method of heat exchangers to a water cooling system and on to the ships cooling system. This significantly increased the ability to tightly package the electronics while still keeping them at an efficient operating temperature that extended their life and optimized their performance.

Instruction Set: Computers execute instructions as defined by their program and programmers. The AN/UYK-43 utilized the previous instructions developed for its predecessor AN/UYK-7 to take full advantage of the huge investment already made by the Navy in mission critical application programs. More efficient instructions were also developed for the AN/UYK-43 to improve the computational ability of processor: floating point arithmetic, trigonometric functions, etc. The combination of improved memory access, gate array, and packaging techniques took giant leaps in technology to improved processing performance speed.

Processing: No processor packed more power and capability into such a small package as the UYK-43. Only later as processing technology continued to improve were others able to attain the levels of performance provided by the UYK-43 to the Navy’s many applications. It remains in use today, 30 years after its original design which is unparalleled in computing and processing technology. Imagine still being able to effectively use a processor that you were using 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. The innovative architecture that stretched the bounds of memory, large scale circuit integration, packaging, cooling, and manufacturing technology was a model for the processors of the future.

Gate Arrays: The UYK-43 lead the usage of Large Scale Integration (LSI) gate arrays where hundreds of thousands (eventually millions) of integrated circuits can be produced on a single piece of silicon. This greatly increased the speed and efficiency of performing the instructions and calculations of the computer which previously used discrete/individual logic circuit devices. The UYK-43’s usage of LSI significantly increased the performance and ability of mission critical defensive or offensive systems to response to its demands much more effectively. This was proven again and again, but in recent history in 2008 with the destruction of a failing satellite by the Aegis cruiser, USS Lake Erie. The UYK-43 computer is the central processor for the Aegis combat system which allowed a SM-2 missile to have a direct/physical impact with the 17,000 mile-per-hour failing satellite: a bullet hitting another bullet.

Memory: The UYK-43 made major advances in storage memory technology through the usage of much faster semiconductor memory technology versus the previous core memories. This was done for both the main memory, but also utilizing the fastest memory technologies available for a cache memory for actual instruction execution. But to populate/load that cache one additional architecture innovation had to be developed and that was to do multiple memory references simultaneously in anticipation of the processor needing that information. This had never been done before and became and industry standard approach utilized today.

Fault Tolerance and Recovery: Never before had a computer been architected to be able to diagnose, isolate, and reconfigure itself so it could stay operational and then informed its human operators of the situation to they could make a repair without impacting the overall system operation.

Input / Output: The UYK-43 is still recognized throughout the computer industry as being one of the very best at quickly and efficiently bringing in large amounts of external sensor and other data. And then after the central processors have made the appropriate calculations and determinations, get that information to a human quickly.  In situations when an incoming missile or aircraft are threatening a vessel, micro-seconds become critical.  Making timely, accurate, quick decisions save lives.

Manufacturing: None of the above could have been accomplished without taking all of the innovating design approaches to “practice” and being able to efficiently and cost effectively produce computers as required by the Navy. New methods for printed circuit board and cable manufacturing had to be created. LSI fabrication techniques pushed the state-of-the-art in silicon fabrication. New approaches to electronic assembly, integration, and testing were conceived and put into practice on a daily basis to produce a reliable product for the Navy. Many of today's accepted Lean Six Sigma methods and practices were started on projects like the UYK-43. [John Westergren]

4.0 Memory Processor by Dick Erdrich

I should note here that when I did the 'architecture' for the Memory Processor to replace the CP-890 I created a design with 24 bits of addressing. We delivered two processors and a common memory rack containing 8 MB in each of the Trident Memory Processors. Two processors could easily share a common memory due to the presence of extremely large Cache Memories in front of both processors. Commercial processors at the time were only using level 1 caches [level 2 was not here yet] of 256 bytes. Each Memory processor CPU had a 256K byte cache. That was all done in the early 80's. [rae]

Shown at the right is the engineering development team, photo submitted by Jim Frazier.

  • Kneeling in front are Dick Erdrich, Joe Dearing, Neil Macrorie, and Stan Dorr.
  • Standing at the left are Bob Litz, John Bergman, and Jim Frazier.
  • Standing at the right are Paul Rodriguez, Bill Zekoff, Marv Janisch, Jim Hadine, and Mel Janisch.

Memory Processor: The ‘Memory Processor’ was a 32-bit machine that was used to provide real-time navigation data to the Improved Accuracy Program targeting computer in the Trident II Missile system. I designed the architecture based on the type of data needing manipulation and included some unique capabilities not available elsewhere. It looked a little like a greatly expanded UNIVAC Type 1616 structure with 4 sets of 32 general registers of 32 bits each. The 30 bit CP-890 software could be run by using a cross-compiler written by Sperry Systems Management (SSM). The first demonstration of the Memory Processor was done running the existing the Trident I navigation code. The support software was written by SSM and was based on the Pascal Standard. The eventual High Order Language, when certified, was ADA. When I designed the architecture I took classes in ADA usage and noted that the generated code liked to use pointers to the extent that they would often use nested pointers. To allow this to happen without slowing execution down, I created a pipeline for instruction and operand address generation. We had overlapped executions in many of our earlier machines but this was the first time to my knowledge that a three stage pipeline was used.

Each register set was tied to a context state: Hardware, Executive, Supervisory, and Task. Context switching took place by instruction or during an interrupt scan. Being an interrupt driven system, I concentrated on keeping context switching time to a minimum. The number of registers was required by the fact that the critical processing was done on complex floating point values with a pair of registers holding the real component and another pair holding the imaginary value. This got even trickier when we went to double length (64-bit) operations. These weren't used very often but when concluding the final navigation solution all of those numbers to the right of the decimal point became important. The instruction set included a full suite of trigonometry functions and the indexing was optimized for matrix operations. One of our goals was to complete a 1024 point complex Fast Fourier Transform in under ...

This is just a sample of what that machine had in it.  I could go on for hours talking about the huge memory, the huge cache memory, the first implementation of Mil-Std-1553 serial on a non-airborne platform, the fully programmable I/O configuration capability, etc. But that’s probably for another day.

Cheers, Dick.

Shown at the left is the checkout and test crew. Helping Lowell [lab] with the face identifications were Dan Reiman [dbr], Dick Lundgren [rfl], Paul Mahowald [pm], and Larry Bolton [lb] - Thanks guys

From left to right they are:

Brent Anderson dbr, Paul Mahowald rfl, Paul Dietzler lab, Brian Newman lb, Paul Rodriguez lab, Greg Berger dbr, Jim Frazier lab, Dan Reiman lab, John Justin dbr, John Bergman dbr [Cecil Metz's brother-in-law lab], Dan Gilbertson dbr, and Dave Smith pm.

5. Repertoire Cards

Many people gave repertoire cards to the Legacy Committee. Keith Myhre scanned the cards before they were donated to the Charles Babbage Institute. The 32-bit cards are linked hereunder. There are copies of many of these cards at the Lawshe Memorial Museum.

6. Technical Manuals

The bit-savers web site (http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/) has over 32,000 documents. We've copied the 32-bit ISA documents and linked them hereunder for technology researchers ease of access.

 

In this Chapter

  1. Introduction [left]
  2. Computer Family 
  3. 32 bit descriptions [below]
  4. Memory Processor!
  5. Repertoire Cards
  6. Technical Manuals

Chapter 55 edited 2/27/2022.