Title:

Simulation Models of Historical Computers - Atlas, MU5 and CDC 6600

Speaker: Roland Ibbett
Date: Thu 16th February 2017
Time: 14:30
Location:

BCS, 5 Southampton St, London WC2E 7HA

 

About the seminar

HASE is a computer architecture simulation environment developed at the University of Edinburgh. A HASE simulation model consists of a file defining the components of the model and their interconnections, a file defining the screen image of the model, a simulation code file for each component and files containing the initial values of registers and memories in the model. Running a simulation produces a trace file which can subsequently be used to animate the on-screen display of the model so as to show data movements, parameter value updates, state changes, etc. HASE has been used to create models for use in both teaching and research. More recently it has been used to create simulation models of some historically interesting computers as a way of bringing them back to (virtual) life: Atlas, MU5 and the CDC 6600. The talk will include demonstrations of these models.

About the speaker

Roland Ibbett retired from the University of Edinburgh in 2006, where he had been a professor of Computer Science since 1985. Prior to that he spent nearly 20 years in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, where he was a major contributor to the design and implementation of MU5. His interest in high performance architectures continued at Edinburgh where he was a founder of the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and where his teaching and research interests led to the creation of the HASE computer architecture simulation environment.

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