On specialized on-board computers, let us put in a word

In this article, I would like to slightly supplement the previous article on specialized military computers . Starting from the 40s, the development of defense equipment moved towards increasing accuracy and range of destruction, increasing the power of weapons of destruction, and the speed of movement. Heading for the automation of arms control operations.



Coming back a little. Until World War II, shooting data was obtained using mechanical builders, differentials, tracking systems, and conoids. Anti-aircraft artillery control devices (PUASO) were invented, used in anti-aircraft defense, firing control devices (PUS) - in naval artillery, torpedo firing devices (TAS) - for bombing. By the year 50, rotary transformers and selsynes, decisive DC amplifiers with negative feedback were created. This helped to solve the problem of determining data for firing and led to a reduction in the dimensions of devices and significantly reduced the labor costs of their manufacture.

Undoubtedly, one device (computer) was required, which would make it possible to solve logical and computational problems of any complexity, it was necessary to create the conditions for the transition to digital computing.

For military affairs, the requirements for created computers have been increased. We needed electronic elements that would be reliable enough, had speed, and all this when working in a wide range of temperatures, with high humidity, vibration, shock. It required the development of a methodology for the construction and design of computers and its main parts, such as arithmetic devices, memory, control devices, power systems, and exchange devices. We also needed a design solution that would allow us to design a computer and ensure its reliable operation under various mechanical and climatic conditions.

Another of the requirements was the use of computational mathematics, which would allow us to formulate numerically, with the required accuracy, solve the problems of using weapons. Means were needed to convert the measured parameters into numbers and to reverse convert the solutions obtained in the form of numbers into values ​​of physical displacements or rotation angles.

The most important issue in creating military computers working in systems was the issue of personnel training. They had to design and produce computers. They were required to be “universal”, since such a specialist had to understand not only mathematical problems associated with algorithms, numerical methods of solution and programming, but also technical and production problems.

On the question of training such specialists in the mid-50s, a discussion arose in the USA: on the basis of what basic education - technical or mathematical - should such specialists be trained? Which chief designer of the computer will be more suited for this job: having a technical or mathematical background?

The development of military computers has shown that chief designers with an engineering background turned out to be more adapted.

There were three areas of application of computers in the military field; they differed in climatic and mechanical operating conditions. The first were used in stationary conditions (indoors), the second in trailers, containers, which were transported by air, water, rail, road and included in the work after being installed in positions, the third were used on moving objects, such machines were called onboard computers (BEWM : transportable, aerospace, rocket, sea). Carriages include VMs; they were installed on tanks, cars and other mobile vehicles.



M-40 Computer

In March 1961, the complex with the M-40 SCVM was the first in the world to destroy the warhead of a ballistic missile with a fragmentation charge of an anti-missile.

In 1956, under the leadership of Lebedev and Burtsev, a digital computer M-40 was developed to control long-range radar stations and to accurately target, to carry out anti-missile guidance on an enemy ballistic missile. This was the first large specialized digital lamp computer. The speed of such a machine was up to 40 thousand operations per second. The OP was on ferrite cores with a capacity of 4096 words and a cycle of 6 μs. Such a digital computer worked with 36-bit fixed-point binary numbers.

In the M-40, a floating operation control cycle and an interrupt system were implemented, the combination of operations with the exchange and the multiplex exchange channel were used. The machine worked in a closed control loop as a control link with remote objects via radio-relay duplex communication lines.

In the spring of 1956, SKB-30 launched a preliminary design of the A missile defense system, the system of which included the following elements: Danube-2 radars with a target detection range of 1,200 kilometers, three anti-missile missiles for precise target guidance, and a launching position with launchers installations of two-stage anti-missile systems "V-1000", the main command and computing station of the system with a lamp computer M-40 and radio-relay communication lines between all the system's facilities.


38 site polygon Sary-Shagan

On March 4, 1961, in the area of ​​the A training ground, the PR V-1000 with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead was successfully intercepted and destroyed at an altitude of 25 km, the R-12 BR launched from the State Central Testing Ground and equipped with a warhead weighing model weighing 500 kg . The “Danube-2” radar of the “A” system detected ballistic missiles at a distance of 1,500 km after it exceeded the radio horizon, after which the parameters of the BR-12 BR trajectory were determined on the M-40 computer, target designation was given to the precise guidance radars and launchers (PU), launched PR and, on command from the CP, undermining the warhead. The warhead of the PR consisted of 16 thousand balls with a tungsten carbide core, TNT filling and a steel shell. The warhead had a flat lesion field in the form of a disk perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the PR. Undermining warhead was carried out on command from the ground with the lead, necessary for the formation of the lesion. This type of warhead was designed under the direction of the Chief Designer A.V. Voronova. The M-40 computer was created at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the supervision of Academician S. A. Lebedev.

Specialized digital computer M-50



In 1959, under the leadership of Lebedev and Burtsev, a specialized digital computer M-50 was created. She was a modification of the M-40 worked with floating point numbers.

A two-machine complex was created on the basis of these two M-40 and M-50 machines. The special-purpose digital computer 5E92 was a modification of the M-50 and was used for monitoring and recording equipment with the ability to remotely record data coming from high-frequency communication channels.

Specialized electronic computing machine 5E26

Under the leadership of Lebedev and Burtsev in 1978, the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computing Engineering (ITMiVT) of the USSR Academy of Sciences developed a specialized electronic computing 5E26. It was the first mobile control multiprocessor high-performance computing system. It is based on the modular construction principle with a highly efficient automatic backup system. She worked in a wide range of climatic and mechanical influences. The automatic backup system was based on hardware control. Programming automation software was developed. The mobile machine worked with high-level languages, non-volatile memory of commands was used on microbixes, there was a possibility of electric rewriting of information by external recording equipment.



The productivity of such a computer was 1.5 million operations per second, the word length was 32 bits, the information was presented as a whole word, half-word, byte and bit. The RAM was 32–34 Kb, and the command memory was 64–256 Kb, and the power consumption was 5–9 kW. An independent information input / output processor over 12 communication channels with a maximum exchange rate of over 1 Mbit per second.

The car had double-sided memory on ferrites. The total dimensions of one plate are 65 * 45 cm, the thickness was 1.2 cm, and the weight is about 6 kg. The ferrite memory consisted of parallelepipeds, two perpendicular wires were passed through them, which formed a two-dimensional matrix. The memory block consisted of 16 double-sided plates.


photo taken from here

5E26 was produced in two versions. The design of the computer was large-block, cells were installed in the blocks. A total of 1,500 such computers were produced, from 1978 to 1994. It was intended for use in weapons control systems of the Ministry of Defense.

SARPO “Yauza” was set up for 5E26 to develop a set of RLU “Basis” programs, and then the Baikal system.


Specialized computing machine 5E92b

Specialized computing machine 40U6

The 40U6 machine was developed in 1988, its chief designer was Krivosheev. It was a mobile control multiprocessor computer; it was also based on the modular principle. Due to the fact that some modules were duplicated and reserved, it was highly reliable, an extensive hardware control system provided the ability to restore the control process in the event of malfunctions or equipment failures.



The SEVM 40U6 worked in real time and was designed to operate in a wide range of climatic and mechanical influences. As in the previous 5E26, it provided advanced mathematical support for programming automation. The car consumed 5.5 kW.

The design of the machine was blocky, 32-bit floating-point words were used. The RAM was 256 kB and had internal control by Hamming codes, byte control of transmissions, interleaving, command memory was 512 kB and internal control by Hamming codes was also provided, byte control of transmissions, a 15-channel information input-output processor was used. Switching to battery power when the power is turned off contributed to the fact that the information did not disappear.

To build 40U6, a low-power series of TTL-microcircuits and CMOS memory microcircuits were used. The software of such a machine is translators from autocode, Fortran, SI, Pascal.

By 1990, more than 200 cars were produced.

Space Gorynych BCVM "Argon-11C"



The first domestic computer, which "flew" into space, was the Argon-11S computer.



It was created in 1968, 21 samples of this machine were made. The machine was used in the Zond spacecraft control system (flying around and photographing the surface of the Moon with the return of the spacecraft to Earth). The work was done in real time. The structure and architecture of the machine had a minimal set of instructions; such a computer consisted of three functionally autonomous computing devices with independent inputs and outputs, interconnected channels for information exchange and synchronization. Input and output of information is carried out by software. “Three-headedness” of the Argon-11S on-board computers is one of the main design features of space computing equipment. The RAM capacity is 128 14-bit words, the RAM capacity is 4096 17-bit words. Tropa-1 integrated hybrid circuits were used.

With the advent of the first domestic series of monolithic integrated circuits, the 110 series (transistor logic integrated circuits with resistive-capacitive coupling), the Argon-11 digital computer for rocketry was developed.

The machine was created in the form of two blocks that were combined into a single design - a block of a three-channel device for exchange and computation with three RAM and a block of a three-channel long-term memory. Using the built-in fans, heat was removed to the case. Machine size - 305x305x550 mm, weight - 34 kg, power consumption was 75 watts, and the continuous operation time was -180 minutes. Such a machine worked in the temperature range from 0 to 40 degrees.

At Argon-11C, for the first time in the practice of creating on-board computers, a node reservation scheme was applied, which was called a troirovanny structure with majorization.

The reliability of this machine was quite high. The probability of failure in two of its three modules was 0.999 for eight days of the flight of the spacecraft to the moon and vice versa.


space probe Zond-4

The space mission was very responsible. The devices of the Zond series were designed on the basis of the Soyuz 7K-L1 manned spacecraft. Their task was to investigate the possibility of landing Soviet cosmonauts on the moon. The Argon-11S digital computer was designed to control the motion of the spacecraft L1 from the “Probe” series during its flight around the Moon and aerodynamic descent to Earth when it entered the atmosphere at the second cosmic velocity.

The task of this was politically important. The Apollo program, run by NASA since the early sixties, entered the manned flight stage by 1968, and the Soviet leadership wanted to wipe its nose to a potential adversary.

The design of the tripled Argon-11S circuit was successful. Later, the same scheme was used to create the Argon-16 digital computer, which is called the space long-lived (used in the most diverse spacecraft for more than 25 years). About three hundred copies of Argon-16 worked in Soyuz, Progress transport carriers, Salyut and Mir orbital stations.

Although the Lunar program of the USSR “failed”, it contributed to the development of on-board computer technology for space basing.

The C-series BCMs that came to replace the Argon, in particular the S-530, were successfully used in the control systems for the Mars and Venus interplanetary stations. With their help, for the first time in the history of mankind, a spacecraft was planted on the surface of Mars, studies of the comet Vega and radar of Venus were carried out.

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About the software of such special computers can be found here.