One of my coworkers let me know about this. It looks to be interesting
and worthwhile for anyone in the San Francisco bay area. There is
a url for an article under "Instructor Notes" below which has some
good stuff in it about an Australian Museum with a nice collection
of PDPs.
Enjoy,
--pec
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EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium
Fall Quarter 1997-1998
Lecture #3
Date: Wednesday, Oct 8,1997
Time: 4:15-5:30 pm
Location: NEC Auditorium (B03)
Gates Computer Science Building
SITN: Wednesday, 6:45-8:00PM, SITN Channel E3
Internet: Live on the Net! See instructions on the Web page
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/class/ee380
**********************************************************************
Speaker: ROBERT M. SUPNIK, Vice President
Corporate Research and Advanced Development
Digital Equipment Corporpation
Title: Retro Computing: Researching the Receding Frontiers of Computers
Digital Equipment Corporation's research labs in Palo Alto and Cambridge
are the cutting edge of the company's work in advanced computer
technology. Responsible for such diverse developments as AltaVista,
Millicent, Gigaswitch/ATM, and the Palo Alto Internet Exchange, the labs
focus on pushing the frontiers of computers in scalable systems,
Internet infrastructure and services, and human-computer interaction.
While the researchers chase computing's future, the research manager (in
his copious spare time) chases computing's past. Computing's history is
of significant educational, historical, and economic value, and it is
rapidly being lost. Computing's past is mostly represented by narrative
texts and preserved non-functional artifacts; access to working examples
is limited to a handful of scattered hobbyists worldwide.
This talk will cover (briefly) the work of Digital's research labs but
will mostly be devoted to retrocomputing: the art and science of
recovering usable examples of computing's past. The talk with cover
"computer archaeology" -- the recovery of lost information and data; the
role of folklore; the varied merits of restoration and simulation as
strategies for preserving the past; and SIMH, the speaker's historical
systems simulator, which currently includes eight significant systems
with supporting software.
About the speaker:
ROBERT M. SUPNIK is vice president of Corporate Research and Advanced
Development (RAD) in Digital's Corporate Strategy and Technology group.
RAD provides Digital with strategic new technologies, competencies and
products. In this position, Supnik is responsible for identifying and
understanding new technological opportunities and helping Digital apply
them for business success.
Supnik currently manages Digital's Cambridge Research Laboratory,
Network Systems Laboratory, Systems Research Center, and Western
Research Laboratory, where he focuses on applications technology,
innovative inter-networking systems, systems research, and mainstream,
high-performance computer systems.
Supnik has been on the vanguard of technology throughout his 20 years at
Digital. A Senior Corporate Consultant Engineer, Supnik started the
Alpha program, and managed it until first product ship. He also started
the MicroVAX chip project, for which he was both project manager and
microprogrammer. Supnik was technical director for the Alpha and VAX
Systems Group, and group manager for the Semiconductor Engineering Group
Microprocessor Development. He also served as product strategist in the
CSD/LSI Microprocessor Group, and project manager for the J-11 chip. In
1994, he was promoted to vice president of Technology and Architecture
in the Computer Systems Division.
Supnik joined Digital in 1977 as a supervisor, then manager, in the
Storage Subsystems Group. He holds BS degrees in mathematics and
history from MIT, and an MA in history from Brandeis University.
In addition to his work at Digital, Supnik is the author of a series of
emulators for historically significant minicomputers.
Contact information:
Bob Supnik
Digital Equipment Corporation
111 Powdermill Road
MSO2-2/G10
Maynard, MA 01754
Tel: (978) 493-8002
Fax: (978) 493-8024
bob.supnik_at_digital.com
Instructor Notes:
You might want to read the article by Maxwell M. Burnet and Robert M.
Supnik, Preserving Computing's Past: Restoration and Simulation in the
December 1996 Digital Technical Journal, which is on-line at
http://www.digital.com/info/DTJN00/.
************************************************************************
* EE380 is the Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium. The Colloquium *
* meets most Wednesdays throughout the normal academic year. The class *
* is broadcast over SITN and taped for late viewing in the Engineering *
* Library. EE380 is now available live on the Internet! *
* *
* For additional information please consult the class web page *
*
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/class/ee380 *
************************************************************************
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Received on Tue Oct 07 1997 - 17:11:34 BST