Installation of the CDC 7600 supercomputer system in the computer centre in 1972
William Nettz · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 1972
The CDC 7600 was installed in 1972 in the newly built computer centre. It was said to be the largest and most powerful computer system in Europe at that time and remained the fastest machine at CERN for 9 years. It was replaced after 12 years. Dr. Julian Blake (CERN), Dr. Tor Bloch (CERN), Erwin Gasser (Control Data Corporation), Jean-Marie LaPorte (Control Data Corporation), Peter McWilliam (Control Data Corporation), Hans Oeshlein (Control Data Corporation), and Peter Warn (Control Data Corporation) were heavily involved in this project and may appear on the pictures. William Nettz (who took the pictures) was in charge of the installation. Excerpt from CERN annual report 1972: 'Data handling and evaluation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics experiments. In order to meet these requirements a new central computer system, CDC 7600/6400, has been acquired and it was brought into more or less regular service during the year. Some initial hardware problems have disappeared but work has still to be done on the software. Nervertheless, the new system was already processing about 30% of the Laboratory's central computing work by the end of the year.'