A mini-micro computer link promotes distributed processing in scientific and engineering computations

Abstract

Engineering and scientific work often requires complex computations of different types that should be carried out on different types of computers on the one hand, but must communicate and support each other on the other. To facilitate efficient execution of such computations, a network composed of mini and micro computers (DEC PDP 11/40 and Intel 8080) with the support of a large computer (CDC CYBER 73) has been built and is described in this paper. The network enables the realization of involved scientific computations that could not be carried out by any one of the computers on its own. A general description of the entire set-up is followed by a more detailed discussion of the micro-mini link, and examples of projects using the network.