The UNIVAC LARC, short for the Livermore Advanced Research Computer, is a mainframe computer designed to a requirement published by Edward Teller in order to run hydrodynamic simulations for nuclear weapon design. It was one of the earliest supercomputers.[1]
LARC supported multiprocessing with two CPUs (called Computers) and an input/output (I/O) Processor (called the Processor). Two LARC machines were built, the first delivered to Livermore in June 1960, and the second to the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin. Both examples had only one CPU, so no multiprocessor LARCs were ever built.[2] Livermore decommissioned their LARC in December 1968[3] and the Navy's LARC was turned off in April 1969.[4]
The LARC CPUs were able to perform addition in about 4 microseconds, corresponding to about 250 kIPS speed. This made it the fastest computer in the world until 1962 when the IBM 7030 took the title. The 7030 started as IBM's entry to the LARC contest, but Teller chose the simpler Univac over the riskier IBM design.
- ^ The Remington Rand Univac LARC
- ^ George Gray (March 1999). "Some Burroughs Transistor Computers". Unisys History Newsletter. Vol. 3, no. 1. Archived from the original on October 1, 2016.
- ^ "Were Early Giant Computers a Success?" (PDF). Datamation. April 1969. pp. 77–82.
After their installation, the two systems remained in continuous use until December 1968, when the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory retired its LARC system which had been operated on a 7-day-per-week, 24-hour-per-day schedule.
- ^ Smith, Ruth C. (1974). "Special Libraries, February 1974". Special Libraries. 65 (2): 61–65. Retrieved 5 June 2024.