Digital Equipment Corporation's research labs in Palo Alto and Cambridge are the cutting edge of the company's work in advanced computer technology. Responsible for such diverse developments as AltaVista, Millicent, Gigaswitch/ATM, and the Palo Alto Internet Exchange, the labs focus on pushing the frontiers of computers in scalable systems, Internet infrastructure and services, and human-computer interaction.
While the researchers chase computing's future, the research manager (in his copious spare time) chases computing's past. Computing's history is of significant educational, historical, and economic value, and it is rapidly being lost. Computing's past is mostly represented by narrative texts and preserved non-functional artifacts; access to working examples is limited to a handful of scattered hobbyists worldwide.
This talk will cover (briefly) the work of Digital's research labs but will mostly be devoted to retrocomputing: the art and science of recovering usable examples of computing's past. The talk with cover "computer archaeology" -- the recovery of lost information and data; the role of folklore; the varied merits of restoration and simulation as strategies for preserving the past; and SIMH, the speaker's historical systems simulator, which currently includes eight significant systems with supporting software.
About the speaker:
ROBERT M. SUPNIK is vice president of Corporate Research and Advanced Development (RAD) in Digital's Corporate Strategy and Technology group. RAD provides Digital with strategic new technologies, competencies and products. In this position, Supnik is responsible for identifying and understanding new technological opportunities and helping Digital apply them for business success.
Supnik currently manages Digital's Cambridge Research Laboratory, Network Systems Laboratory, Systems Research Center, and Western Research Laboratory, where he focuses on applications technology, innovative inter-networking systems, systems research, and mainstream, high-performance computer systems.
Supnik has been on the vanguard of technology throughout his 20 years at Digital. A Senior Corporate Consultant Engineer, Supnik started the Alpha program, and managed it until first product ship. He also started the MicroVAX chip project, for which he was both project manager and microprogrammer. Supnik was technical director for the Alpha and VAX Systems Group, and group manager for the Semiconductor Engineering Group Microprocessor Development. He also served as product strategist in the CSD/LSI Microprocessor Group, and project manager for the J-11 chip. In 1994, he was promoted to vice president of Technology and Architecture in the Computer Systems Division.
Supnik joined Digital in 1977 as a supervisor, then manager, in the Storage Subsystems Group. He holds BS degrees in mathematics and history from MIT, and an MA in history from Brandeis University.
In addition to his work at Digital, Supnik is the author of a series of emulators for historically significant minicomputers.
Contact information:
Bob Supnik
Digital Equipment Corporation
111 Powdermill Road
MSO2-2/G10
Maynard, MA 01754
Tel: (978) 493-8002
Fax: (978) 493-8024
bob.supnik@digital.com
Instructor Notes:
You might want to read the article by Maxwell M. Burnet and Robert M. Supnik, Preserving Computing's Past: Restoration and Simulation in the December 1996 Digital Technical Journal.