Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War

nxobject 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As the article belatedly mentions, the ~40 GB automated tape library for HARVEST was the bee's knees... and possibly the inspiration for "harvest now, encrypt later".

PS – Primary sources for the IBM 7950/HARVEST on Bitsavers, excellent as always:

https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7950/

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MeteorMarc 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Decrypt later, I suppose.

	▲	nxobject 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ouch, that was indeed a typo...

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zkmon 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What happened to IBM?

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BenoitP 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They had vertical integration and made bank. Then each layer got more complex as computing became mainstream, and IBM got out-competed on everyone of them by specialized companies. And then they sold them off. The only layer that remains is the most strategic: the customer relationship.

IBM is now just a consultancy.

	▲	INTPenis 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not much is left of the great IBM, but their Z architecture is still superior when it comes to reliability at scale. In fact, "what happened to IBM?", they were in the news recently: https://wccftech.com/ibm-worlds-first-dual-architecture-proc... Creating the world's first dual instruction set CPU.
	▲	noir_lord 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I think that's a little simplistic/reductive. In some areas IBM still holds if not a technological advantage at least the first among equals position, they just aren't areas that are flashy or generally known outside of folks like us - Mainframes and related technologies for example, the IBM Z series is still a huge player there. They are also a consultancy though.
	▲	chinathrow 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They still produce the mainframe hardware ranges though.
	▲	anonymous_sorry 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> IBM is now just a consultancy. Except that they own Red Hat

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smolder 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They became NSC, no such company.

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Nursie 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sometime in the 90s they decided that becoming a services and consultancy provider was more important than being involved in large-scale commodity hardware or really anything else.

Over three decades they've exited commodity hardware (x-series and thinkpads), retreated from a lot of software stuff and generally gone as hard as they can for large-scale business contracts. They seem to keep a decent amount of cutting-edge hardware research going, Power is still broadly competitive with x86 AFAICT, but the volumes have got to be pretty low these days and I half suspect that some of it is just a "Hey look at us we're still here" play rather than actually feeding into products, because services are the profit-centre.

They're still huge and have a lot of money, and they own Redhat. But IMHO it's in a long, slow decline, and it has stepped back from the public eye and most public-facing markets.

Context - I've worked for them in a few places. Obvs my opinons are my own, especially as I've been 'out' for over a decade at this point.

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ablation 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That one job was to process "sensitive" intelligence intercepts and break codes, if you're not grabbed by the clickbait headline. It's a good read.