Talk:UNIVAC 1108

The 1106 was a slowed down version of the 1108. The 1100/10 and 1100/20 were similar to the 1106, but with electronic versus core memory. The CAU nomenclature for CPU was not applied until the 1110 was introduced in about 1972. The I/O section of the 1108 CPU was isolated in a separate component called the Input/Output Access Unit (IOAU), logically necessitating a change in the name for a CPU to Command/Arithmetic Unit (CAU). The 1100/40 was an 1110 with two kinds of memory: slow and fast. Sperry called this "layered" memory. It was necessary to mark programs as requiring slow or fast memory according to whether they were I/O-bound or compute-bound, respectively. The 1100/80 dropped the CAU/IOAU nomenclature, yet the architecture remained the same. There were up to 4 CPUs and 4 IOUs where the channels lived. The 1100/80 was the first Univac to directly support IBM-style block multiplexor channels. Formerly, devices that were built for the IBM market could be connected to a Univac only by way of a Multiple Subsystem Adaptor (MSA) which was a block multiplexor that adapted the word channels of the Univac to the byte-oriented data stream. There was an 1100/80 and an 1100/80A. Externally, the only difference was an improved hardware partitioning and system operator panel. Incandescent lights were replaced with a Christmas-tree array of green, red, and yellow LEDs.--72.75.76.186 14:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I worked on an 1108, 1106, 1100/40, 1100/80, and 1100/90 system in 30+ years at University of Maryland, College Park. Do you think additional information about cycle times, etc, are appropriate for this entry? zben@umd.edu 173.79.51.211 (talk) 17:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)