
Dudley Buck's Forgotten Cryotron Computer (2014) - rutenspitz
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/dudley-bucks-forgotten-cryotron-computer
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Animats
That's well known in crypto history. "I want a thousand-megacycle computer!
I'll get you the money" said the general heading NSA in the 1960s. The best
they ever got from cyrotrons was a special-purpose device, not a whole
computer. But they reportedly did get a gigahertz clock rate, decades before
anybody else.

The trouble with cyrotrons was that you could make them fast, but you couldn't
make them small. Not by IC standards, anyway. They have a magnetic component,
which limits the packing density and makes fabrication by lithography very
tough. So mainstream IC technology won out.

In the early days of computing, the military was way ahead of the civilian
market, because the military was spending the money. In the early 1980s, the
civilian market caught up, and by the late 1980s, the now much larger civilian
market was ahead.

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aab0
> The best they ever got from cyrotrons was a special-purpose device, not a
> whole computer. But they reportedly did get a gigahertz clock rate, decades
> before anybody else.

What did they do with it?

~~~
Animats
Probably a cryptanalysis key-tester, like all the WWII cryptanalysis machines,
but faster.

Take a look at [1] and read the description of the custom hardware they had
added to HARVEST, their IBM 7030 STRETCH computer. That gives a sense of the
hardware wanted for statistical cryptanalytic key testing.

[1] [http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/NSA-
HGPEDC_1964.pdf](http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/NSA-HGPEDC_1964.pdf)

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nickpsecurity
Fascinating article. Thanks for sharing it. People interested in exotic, old
computers might also like this file listing NSA's designs up to 60's:

[http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/NSA-
HGPEDC_1964.pdf](http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/NSA-HGPEDC_1964.pdf)

One surprised me by using mercury. Proving no buffer overflows exist in the
code was rarely more significant far as hardware itself went. ;)

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jeffwass
Awesome article!

When they were describing his research in the beginning of the article, I
thought "I wonder if he worked at Lincoln Lab, this is just the kind of thing
they'd be into". And sure enough he did work there later on.

Also cool to see that letterhead from Lincoln Lab, Division 6 (solid state
research) which was around way back then! FYI, I worked in Division 8 at LL
back in the late 90's (doing electro-optics). Awesome place.

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mikeash
Fascinating technology. I wonder what the current hand-wringing over helium
shortages would have looked like in a world where cryotrons became the
dominant computing element.

