About specialized onboard computers let's say a word

In this article I would like to slightly supplement the previous article on specialized military computers . The development of means of defense since the 40s has been moving towards increasing the accuracy and range of destruction, increasing the power of means of destruction, and the speed of movement. The course was taken on the automation of weapons control operations.



Going back a little. Before World War II, data were obtained for firing using mechanical builders, differentials, tracking systems and conoids. Anti-aircraft artillery control devices (PUAZO) were invented, used in anti-aircraft defense, fire control devices (PUS) in ship artillery, torpedo firing devices (TAS) for bombing. By the year 50, rotating transformers and selsins, decisive DC amplifiers with negative feedback, were created. This helped to solve the problem of determining the data for the shooting and led to a decrease in the dimensions of the instruments and significantly reduced the labor costs for their manufacture. Such a transition to electromechanical and electronic devices helped significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing mechanical computing devices (after all, the accuracy of the output data in these computing solutions was directly related to the accuracy of their production).

Undoubtedly, one device (computer) was required, which would enable the solving of logical and computational problems of any complexity, it was necessary to create conditions for the transition to digital computing.
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For military affairs, the requirements for computers created were increased. We needed electronic components that would be quite reliable, fast-acting, and all this when working in a wide range of temperatures, with high humidity, vibrations, and impacts. It was necessary to develop methods for the construction and design of computers and its main parts, such as arithmetic, memory, control devices, power systems, and exchange devices. It was also necessary to design a solution that would allow to issue a computer, to ensure its reliable operation under different mechanical and climatic conditions.

Another requirement was the use of computational mathematics, which would allow to formulate and numerically, with the required accuracy, solve problems on the use of weapons. Funds were needed for converting the measured parameters into numbers and for the inverse transformation of the solutions obtained in the form of numbers into physical displacements or rotation angles.

The most important in the creation of military computers, working in systems, was the issue of training. They had to design and produce computers. They were required to "universality", because such a specialist had to understand not only the mathematical problems associated with algorithms, numerical methods of solution and programming, but also technical and industrial problems.

On the issue of training such specialists in the mid-50s, a discussion arose in the United States: on the basis of what basic education - technical or mathematical - should such specialists be trained? Which chief designer of the computer will be more suitable for this work: having a technical or mathematical education?

The development of military computers has shown that chief designers with engineering education 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 ones were used in stationary conditions (indoors), the second ones were used in trailers, containers that were transported by air, water, rail, road, and were put into operation after being installed on positions, the third were used on moving objects, such machines were called on-board computers (BEVM : airborne, aerospace, rocket, sea). The VMs are mobile, they were installed on tanks, cars and other mobile vehicles.



COMPUTER M-40

In March 1961, for the first time in the world, the combat part of a ballistic missile was fired with an anti-missile missile missile with a complex with the central computer M-40.

In 1956, under the leadership of Lebedev and Burtsev, the M-40 digital computer was developed to control the long-range tracking and precision guidance, the implementation of anti-missile targeting of an enemy ballistic missile. It was the first large specialized on-tube CVT. 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 work cycle of 6 μs. It worked such a PC with 36-bit binary numbers with a fixed comma.

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

In the spring of 1956, SKB-30 released a draft design of an anti-missile system “A”, which included the following elements: “Danube-2” radar with a target detection range of 1,200 kilometers, three precision targeting radars, a launching position with installations of two-stage anti-missile "V-1000", the main command-computing point of the system with a lamp computer M-40 and radio relay communication lines between all means of the system.


38 Sary-Shagan test site

March 4, 1961 in the area of ​​the "A" of the PR B-1000 with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead was successfully intercepted and destroyed at an altitude of 25 km BR R-12, launched from the State Central Polygon (GPC) and equipped with a 500 kg weight model . Radar "Danube-2" system "A" found a BR at a distance of 1500 km after its release over the radio horizon, after which the parameters of the BR R-12 trajectory were determined on an M-40 computer, target designation was issued to radars of precise guidance and launchers (PU) produced the launch of the PR and on command with the CP undermining the warhead. The combat part of the PR consisted of 16 thousand balls with a tungsten carbide core, a TNT filling and a steel shell. The CU had a flat lesion field in the form of a disk, perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the PR. The subversion of warheads was carried out on command from the ground with the lead needed to form the field of destruction. This type of warhead was designed under the direction of Chief Designer A.V. Voronov. TsVM M-40 was created at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Academician S.. Lebedeva.

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 with floating point numbers.

On the basis of these two machines M-40 and M-50 a two-machine complex was created. Specialist CVM 5E92 was a modification of the M-50 and was used for control and recording equipment with the ability to remotely record data from high-frequency communication channels.

Specialized electronic computing machine 5E26

Under the leadership of Lebedev and Burtsev in 1978, the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computing Equipment (ITMiVT) of the USSR Academy of Sciences developed an electronic computational specialized 5E26. It was the first mobile multiprocessor control high-performance computing system. At the core is a modular design 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. The mathematical software of programming automation was developed. The mobile machine worked with high-level languages, non-volatile memory of commands on microbixes was used, there was a possibility of electrical overwriting of information with external recording equipment.



The performance of such a computer was 1.5 million operations per second, the word length was 32 bits, the information was represented as a whole word, half-word, byte and bit. The operating memory was 32–34 Kb, and the volume of the command memory was 64–256 Kb, the power consumption was 5–9 kW. An independent information input / output processor for 12 communication channels, which has a maximum exchange rate of more than 1 Mbit per second.

In the car there was a two-sided memory on ferrites. The total dimensions of one plate are 65 * 45 cm, the thickness was 1.2 cm, 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

Produced 5E26 in two versions. The design of the computer was large-block; cells were installed in blocks. A total of 1.5 thousand of such computers were produced, from 1978 to 1994. Intended for use in the weapons control systems of the Ministry of Defense.

SARPO “Yauza” was set up at 5E26 to develop the RLU Osnova software package, and then the Baikal system.


Specialized computer 5E92b

Specialized 40U6 computer

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



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

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

To build the 40U6, a low-power series of TTL chips and CMOS memory chips were used. The software of such a machine is a translator from an auto code, Fortran, SI, Pascal.

By 1990, the time released more than 200 cars.

Space Gorynych BTsVM "Argon-11S"



The Argon-11S on-board computer was the first domestic onboard computer that “flew” into space.



It was created in 1968, 21 samples of this car were made. The machine was used in the Zond spacecraft control system (circling 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 minimum set of commands; such a computer consisted of three functionally autonomous computing devices with independent inputs and outputs connected by channels for information exchange and synchronization. Input-output information is carried out in software. "Three-head" on-board computer "Argon-11C" - one of the main design features of space computing equipment. The RAM capacity is 128 14-bit words, DZU is 4096 17-bit words. Integrated hybrid circuits “Tropa-1” were used. The main advantage of the Trail series was the simplicity of the technology.

With the advent of the first domestic series of monolithic integrated circuits - the 110 series (integrated transistor logic chips with resistive-capacitive couplings), the Argon-11 on-board computer was developed for rocket technology.

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

In Argon-11C, for the first time in the creation of on-board computers, a node redundancy scheme was used, which was called a third-party structured majority structure.

The reliability of this machine was quite high. The probability of the absence of backoffs in two of its three modules was 0.999 for eight days of the flight of the spacecraft to the Moon and back.


space station Zond-4

The cosmic mission was very responsible. The instruments of the “Probe” series were designed on the basis of a manned vehicle “Soyuz 7K-L1”. Their task was to investigate the possibility of landing on the Moon of the Soviet cosmonauts. The Argon-11S onboard computer was designed to control the movement of the L1 spacecraft from the Probe series when it was circled around the moon and the aerodynamic descent to Earth when it entered the atmosphere at the second cosmic velocity.

The task of this was politically important. The Apollo program, developed by NASA from the beginning of the sixties, by 1968 entered the stage of manned flights, and the leadership of the USSR wanted to wipe the nose of the potential adversary.

The design of the Argon-11C triggered scheme was awesome. Later, the same scheme was used to create the Argon-16 BCVM, which is called the cosmic long-liver (used in the most diverse space vehicles for more than 25 years). About three hundred copies of the Argon-16 worked in Soyuz, Progress transport, and the Salut or Mir orbital stations.

Although the Lunar Program of the USSR suffered a fiasco, it contributed to the development of spaceborne computing onboard computers.

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

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