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Colossus has been Rebuilt
Max Driver writes "In celebration of D-Day, "Colossus", one of the earliest electronic code-breaking machines, has been rebuilt after ten years of effort by computer conservationists. Colossus was used to break the Lorenz cipher. This story is being reported by the BBC. Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2 microseconds) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC."
Phew. For a moment, I thought they were talking about this Colossus.
An artificially intelligent supercomputer is developed and activated, only to reveal that it has a sinister agenda of its own
When I read the headline I thought it was about the Colossus of Rhodes!
:)
This is cool too
OLPC Australia
... and the IRS still uses it to this day.
It only matches the speed of a modern PC at the single task it was designed for. Think of it as a very old, very interesting DSP. (I recall the stories on SlashDot about how the GPUs on modern ATI/nVidia cards are "many times faster than P4s"... well, yes, but you can't run Linux on them...)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Just goes to show what can be done when you are clever about using what you have.
Agile Artisans
Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2 microseconds) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC."
This definitely shows you what a good design can do. WIth all the advancement I expected that thing to be slower than my TI-89 calculator.
Evolution or ID?
This to me illustrates the need for free information. If information about this machine had been made public in the years after the war, we may now have been a good few megahertz ahead of our selves in computer technology.
Er, this is an obviously ridiculous statement. A modern PC is such an order of magnitude faster that it could probably run equations simulating the circuit behaviour itself and still run real time. Compare 1,000 values at 1MHz (which it probably isn't anywhere near in reality), and a slow tape data input (even with 5 of them), to 10 million transistors at 3GHz.
Funny thing is so many people seem to think there's nothing odd about it.
There is also a wikipedia article about the Colossus computer , perhaps more relevant.
The code breakers in these small prefabricated huts probably shortened the war by two years and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Surely us geeks can help save this site and remember their contribution? If you can't get there to volunteer, maybe use their online form and give them a small donation? Their website is going to be slashdotted at this rate, so how about slashdotting their intray with donations?
I would urge all UK-based \.ers to go and visit Bletchley Park as soon as possible. It's an amazing day out. It's just sad that the UK government doesn't appear to recognise the historical significance of BP and spend whatever is required to restore the site. Hut 6 and Hut 1, where most of the decoding was done are practically falling down these days.
This is the real one!. Ignore the other ones, this is the REAL wikipedia link. Verify it for yourself!
Ah, the Dick Van Dyke theory of England (for those not aware, DVD played a cockney chimney sweep in the film "Mary Poppins", thereby setting back UK-USA relations a few decades)
1. Most people in England do not have computers based on 486s - I'd be surprised if it was more than 10%. I would suggest that low end P4s are in the majority
2. Any PC with a serial port can read a paper tape with a suitable paper tape reader attached (I've done this in the recent past)
3. Better than a kid whinging on about things that he doesn't understand.
BTW, I think you'll find "mates" to be an Aussie soubriquet, rather than an English one.
But look at the popularity of the ideas we exported; why, in central London a pub has a sign outside saying it was where the Communist Manifesto was launched, and offering themed lunches (borscht etc.) (oddly I can't remember a similar sign outside the hofbrauhaus in Munich). Who would have thought that would take off?
The Colossi were not programmable (they just did precisely one thing rather well), so it may be hard to consider them computers in all possible senses. Konrad Zuse's Z3 (Wikipedia Link) was also completed two years prior and was Turing complete, so it's hard to really give Colossus any credit other than the impact it had on the war.
One of my grad school professors wrote a detailed book on colossus as a project to keep him busy in retirement.
9 74 304506/qid=1086095280/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-610257 7-9835954?v=glance&s=books
"From Fish to Colossus: How the German Lorenz Cipher was Broken at Bletchley Park"
by Harvey Cragon
On amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
I proofread an early copy of the book and it was quite interesting how the cryptanalysis was done and even more impressive what these people accomplished with technology that was, to quote Spock, not much removed from bearskins and stone knives.
I have seen a project to run programs on a gpu, with BrookGPU.
It would only be applicable for certain applications, but some of the things that a graphics card excels at (I think) are linear algebra, vector manipulation, and some other number-crunching activities.
You can't run linux on it though, just programs written in Brook Stream language (an extension of ANSI C).
I really put that down to two things:
1) Most people in England still only have 486 computers
2) He's talking about deciphering stuff off a paper tape, something a modern PC can't do at any speed
3) An old guy bragging about life's accomplishments (which is okay).
At least we can count.
...but if you get to Bletchley Park, for goodness sake don't mention the film U-571 :-) the retired UK military people who are the tour guides get a bit twitchy that Hollywood makes out it was the US Navy and not the Royal Navy (UK) who grabbed vital code books from a sinking U-boat (which I think was actually U-110). (actually they are quite relaxed and happy to correct/ give more info , plus the U571 film makers donated a couple of huge u-boat props which are in the grounds of BP).
Really? I thought it was the millions of Russians who died. The Americans got anywhere _near_ the war after the Russians were already stopping the Germans.
And those strategic bombings never did much damage either. In fact, it cost the US far more to bomb Germany, than it cost Germany to rebuild the odd factory that got hit by a bomb and replace/repair the fighters.
Now I'm not saying that US didn't help, and we're all grateful for that. (If nothing else, otherwise the whole Europe would have ended up communist.)
But, no offense, claiming to basically have singlehandedly won the war is a tad shameless. Without the USSR to hammer the Germans from the other side, and without the UK as a base, the US wouldn't even have made it onto the European mainland. Much less beatten Germany.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Most people in England do not have computers based on 486s - I'd be surprised if it was more than 10%. I would suggest that low end P4s are in the majority
He never said they did. He just said that this would be an explanation of the performance claimed.
Any PC with a serial port can read a paper tape with a suitable paper tape reader attached (I've done this in the recent past)
I think he was joking, and using this to explain why a modern PC would be slower than a 60 year old valve based machine.
Better than a kid whinging on about things that he doesn't understand.
He wasn't. You were. It was a joke post to explain something that is apparently not the case. Don't take it so seriously.
For more information see "The Code Book" by Simon Singh.
It was developed by the superbly named Clifford Cocks, a at GCHQ in 1973 (IIRC thats three years before Rivest et al.) Apparently he thought it no big deal (completing an implementation of Ellis' original proof-of-concept practically overnight) and filed it away for further reference. End of story. Cocks is now chief mathematician at GCHQ; and given that he's probably intercepting this communication as I write, I dare say he will pop-up if what I've said is inaccurate!
The true tragedy is obviously that RSA is called RSA, rather than the far more amusing "Cocks Encryption" or similar. The sheer weight of punnage (e.g., "Hard Cocks Encryption" anyone?) is a tragic is a loss to humanity IMHO.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
It doesn't say that it was cleverly designed to do a single purpose so that its as fast as modern processors. It says that its parallel tape drives were so fast that it can match modern processors. That is a ridiculous statement. Now, that doesn't mean that it isn't as fast as modern computers, but that it isn't because of the speed of the hardware.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Fatal error on tape0 - unknown error, paper exploded?
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Ah well, since no-one can accept british superiority, here is an abridged list of british inventions ripped of by the good ol' US of A.
1) Computers
2) 'RSA' encryption
3) Jet engines
4) All-Moving tailplanes (to allow supersonic jets)
5) Jump-jets (namely, Harrier)
6) Radar and Microwave ovens
+ Many more but i'm feeling far too lazy.
7. Inalienable human rights (Magna Carta)
8. Liberal democracy (John Stuart Mill, John Locke, etc., etc...)
but the Americans don't seem to be using them any more. Can you send them back to Britain please if you're finished with them please?
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Either way we would have ended up with a continent of people with one muscular arm.
Wait, I'm confused. You'd end up with a continent of Slashdot readers?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Hooray! Thousands of people died! Let's par-tay!
Perhaps you need a refresher on the meaning of 'celebrate' before making would-be sarcastic remarks:
"1 : to perform (a sacrament or solemn ceremony) publicly and with appropriate rites"
"2 a : to honor (as a holiday) by solemn ceremonies"
Here we go again. There are four contenders in this race "First {suitably qualified} Computer":
The Zuse Zn (Z1 - 1938, Z2 - 1939, Z3 - 1941)
Colossus (1944)
ABC (between 1938 and 1942)
Eniac (1946)
The ABC was not Turing complete (and, indeed, not programmable), and was probably beaten into production by the Z3 anyway . The other three are Turing complete. The Z3 was the first to be Turing complete, but it was only realised in 1998 that this was true. Colossus was Turing complete (and this was known at the time - Turing worked next door after all), but was classified top secret. Eniac was Turing complete too, but was definitely last.
So, depending on your definition of computer and how "electronic" you insist on it being, you can pick any of them. But in my opinion the ABC has probably the narrowest of claims, with Colossus the best claim. Eniac definitely had the greatest influence.
The "electronic" part of this argument is in my opinion a complete red herring. Imagine in a few (?) years time when (if) nano-technology comes of age and instead of electronic switches we go back to nano-mechanical switches. Are these computers somehow inferior to the ABC just because they are once more electromechanical like the Zuse Z3 (albeit with switches a billion times smaller)? No, I don't think so.
This is not to criticise the ABC though - it was an impressive acheivement in its own right. But too much is claimed for it: for example it was not the first to use binary as is claimed - the Z1 used binary.
I think the story goes something like this: a few years ago the team reproducing the Colossus set out by writing an emulator for the PC. It wasn't written that smartly and ran slower than the real thing. Now, several years later, that statement is being repeated more often than it should be. But I think that in the weak sense I have outlined it was once true.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
link1
link2
Happy reading.
You'd still need to transfer data through the AGP bus. More data than currently is done, in fact.
Modern graphics cards assemble each frame from a collection of images, or textures, that are provided it. The GPU performs mathematical operations on these textures in order to orient them somewhere in the field of view.
If you performed all of the operations on the CPU, you'd not only be taking up instruction cycles, you'd have to transmit entire frames through the AGP bus. 1600x1200x24bytes works out to about 44Mb per frame. At 24 fps, that's about one gigabit per second. That's an awful low refresh rate. Let's raise it to 56Hz. Now we're at 2.33Gb/s, more than normal PCI. Let's go for a smooth 85Hz: Now we're at 3.54Gb/s. Let's look forwards to higher resolutions, say, 3200x2400@85Hz: 14.17Gb/s. More than the latest HyperTransport revision can handle. By this time, you've already crowded out hard drive and network access. Your sound might be in trouble too.
That's an awful lot of bandwidth. And don't forget the space on the CPU die, and cache pollution for other processes. And Memory latency, not to mention the fact that a lot of that memory could be used for other game data.
That's not to say there wouldn't be advantages. You could also conceivably perform physics calculations like collision detection and simple FEA.
All in all, though, it's more efficient to have a multiprocessor setup where specific tasks are run on specialized hardware.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Colossus has been Rebuilt
:-)
Great! In time for the next X-Men movie too
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Of course, the medium you are using now was invented by an Englishman working in Switzerland. The underlying technology (that became ARPANet) was actually suggested by researchers at the National Physical Laboratory in England, built on Baran's (an American!) packet switching idea.
And any time you use PKI, remember that it was someone from Britain (GCHQ) who actually invented it, althuogh the UK government made him sit on it (see www.gchq.gov.uk)
But then of course, most of the interesting work in Science and Mathematics was done either by the British or by others working here like Dirac, Wittgenstein, Rutherford, Davy, Hooke and Newton inter alia.
This is not meant to sound like a flag-waving exercise for the UK, just to remind some of our less intelligent colonial friends that they did not, in fact, invent everything and bless the world with their very existence. I mean, you can't even find WMD in a country the size of Iraq...
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
Ever used a Zaurus or a iPaq( That's why it's called StrongARM )? How about a newer Palm Pilot?
The ARM processor is a wonder of low power design!
Perhaps I will crawl back into the cave and stare at the shadows...
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
What else is uniquely British that we'd want to entice the Americans into 'stealing' in a sort of 'You touched it last! It's your's now!' way?
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I'm waiting for 'Colossus' the movie, starring a daring team of americans at Bletchley who single-handedly invent Colossus, run Ultra and crack the codes just in time, all the while undermined by those stuck-up brits who always try to spoil everything by saying "You bloody yanks can't just storm in here and expect to win the war in a week!".
An old ex-empire Britain may be, but they were the first empire to dismantle itself (for the most part), and every territory they lost was made, by and large, in their image. The english civil war was over 50 years before the french revolution - they created the first democracy in europe (by killing their king - can you imagine usurping your own president?), and the american ideals of democracy were descended from this. Oh, and industry? The brits invented that too - Adam Smith was no yank!
My point is that every empire has its day, even with the best will in the world. And when your time comes you can either acceed to the rising benevolent power (US, not Nazi), or have power wrestled from you.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty. -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
Most of these machines had electronic arithmetic units. The big problem was memory. There were no good memory technologies yet, and none of those machines had much memory. They all basically had a few registers, like a calculator. Each bit of memory required a relay, a tube, or a discrite capacitor and switchgear.
Finally, the memory problem was solved. EDVAC, (1947-1952), had 1K of mercury-tank delay line memory. This was a lousy main memory technology (you had to wait for the word you wanted to come around, like a disk), but allowed reasonable memory sizes. It was clunky, but at last, there was memory.
With the memory problem partially solved, various groups started building machines. Pilot ACE, ACE, and IAS date from this period.
The UNIVAC I (1948-1951) had it all - memory (1K words, in mercury tanks), console, tape drives, console typewriter, programmability, electronic arithmetic, a reasonable instruction set, and self-checking. It was built, sold, and used. UNIVAC I was the first of these machines that a modern programmer would consider usable.
I'm waiting for 'Colossus' the movie, starring a daring team of americans at Bletchley who single-handedly invent Colossus, run Ultra and crack the codes just in time
;-)
One vital detail missing there, the bit where handsome Texan stud Alan Turing gets the girl at the end
It's not entirely true that the bombing didn't have much damage. The reason the German industry grew immune to it was that the Germans would rebuild factories further to the east, to escape the range of the bombers. But that had the direct effect of putting the factories closer to the Russian Front - which wasn't exactly a safe haven either. Because of Russian advances on the ground, the germans did lose industry very quickly in the end and thus lose their ability to supply their armies and thus they collapsed rather fast once they were back within their own borders. But it was allied bombing that forced them to put the factories where the Russians could overtake them, instead of keeping them safely in the core of Germany. So, yes, the allied bombing had a very big effect on the war - it forced the Germans to disperse their industry to the periphery, and thus it sped up the ending phase where the Germans were in retreat.
It's still a lie to say the US is solely responsible, of course. I agree with you on that sentiment. (Although it's important not to downplay the Pacific theatre, in which the US was in a position to do most of the effort, and did so despite putting less resources into it than into the European theatre - good cryptography played a major role there - the US knew the Japaneese codes and therefore could predict exactly when and where to concentrate forces to handle Japanese attacks, and thus could beat the japaneese even with the drastically reduced forces left after Pearl Harbor.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
CSIRAC - (1949 - 1961) - digital computer, entire machine housed at melbourne museum (victoria, australia) after service with CSIRO ( formerly called CSIR), Radio physics lab Sydney University finally residing at Melbourne University.
Interesting facts ...
one of last original computers intact
CSIR Mk1 or CSIRAC designed by team lead by Maston Beard and Trevor Pearcey for CSIR (CSIRO)
primary store of 768 20-bit words
magnetic drum 4,096 word capacity
10ms access time
clock speed 1000Hz
serial bus
paper tape input
30 KW power requirement
crt output of registers
high level programming via language INTERPROGRAM
audio output for errors
first computer programmed for music
emululator available
references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/csirac/csirac.html
story on recreations of some of the original music tracks CSIRAC
50th Anniversary of the CSIRAC
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup