DDP-24

DDP-24
Design
Manufacturer Computer Control Company
Release date 1963[1]
Units sold 25+ (1964)[2]
Price $87,000.00[2]
Casing
Dimensions Length : 233 cm (92 in)
Depth : 100 cm (39 in)
Height : 155 cm (61 in)[3]
Weight 2,000 pounds (910 kg) [2]
Power 2000 W @ 115 V AC[3]
System
CPU 24-bit processor @ 200 kHz (5 µs cycle)[1]
Memory 98 kilobytes (32767 x 24 bit)
MIPS 0.2 MIPS
FLOPS 100 000 FLOPS
Successor DDP-224

The DDP-24 (1963[1]) was a 24-bit computer designed and built by the Computer Control Company, aka 3C or CCC, located in Framingham, Massachusetts. The company then built the DDP-224 (1965[1]), which was followed by the DDP-124 (1966[1], integrated circuit) [4]. Prior to CCC's 1966 acquisition by Honeywell[1][5], Computer Control Corporation also built the 16-bit DDP-116 (1965)[6].

Hardware

The DDP-24 was completely transistorized and used magnetic core memory to store data and program instructions. It had a sign magnitude code to represent positive or negative numbers and used binary logic. The DDP-24 used a single address command format and single operation with index and indirect addressing flags.

Market acceptance

The DDP-24 found use in Space and flight simulators of the mid-1960s and other real-time scientific data processing applications.

Peter B. Denes, a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., installed a DDP-224 system around 1965 for use in speech research.[7] It and a DDP-24 were used by Max Mathews, considered by many to be the founding father of computer music, to develop his GROOVE music system, as related by Professor Barry Vercoe in a 1999 MIT Media Lab interview.[8] When asked to describe the first MIT experimental music studio, Prof. Vercoe replied, "We began that work when I first arrived in 1971. The first studio we had was in the basement of Building 26, where we had a computer given to MIT by Max Mathews-the Honeywell DDP-24. Max initially developed his GROOVE system on this machine and was kind enough to give it to MIT when I joined the faculty." The 3C DDP-24 used modules or cards called S-Pac’s. These S-Pac cards could be Flip-Flops, NAND gates, Bit Registers etc. and were housed in a DDP-24 S-Bloc card rack.[9] An early raster-scan graphics display was developed for the computer system.[10]

  • DDP-24 Instruction Manual, August 64, PDF
  • BRL REPORT NO. 1227 JANUARY 1964
  • Adams Report 1967, PDF
  • "Oral History of John William (Bill) Poduska" (PDF).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Adams Report 1967, PDF
  2. 1 2 3 BRL REPORT NO. 1227 JANUARY 1964
  3. 1 2 DDP-24 Instruction Manual, August 64, PDF
  4. ↑ One of the developers of the DDP-124, William Poduska, who later on became one of the founders of Prime Computer, said in a 2002 interview that the 124 came after the 224, which came after the 24. The 24, 224, 124 sequence is confirmed in "DDP-124 Microcircuit General Purpose Digital Computer" (PDF).
  5. ↑ Kenneth Flamm's 2010 book, ISBN 0815707215, named "Creating the Computer"
  6. ↑ Zhou, Yong (2014-05-23). The European Computer Users Handbook 1968/69: Pergamon Computer Data Series. First installation dates. Elsevier. p. 111.20. ISBN 9781483146690.
  7. ↑ Denes, Peter B., "Real-Time Speech Research," Proc. Symposium on the Human Use of Computing Machines, Bell Telephone Laboratories, June 1966, pp. 15-23.
  8. ↑ 1999 MIT Media Lab interview with Professor Barry Vercoe
  9. ↑ 3C Computer Control Company DDP-24 Card Rack circa 1964
  10. ↑ Noll, A. Michael, "Scanned-Display Computer Graphics," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 14, No. 3, (March 1971), pp. 145-150.
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