BESM (БЭСМ) is the series of Soviet mainframe computers built in 1950–60s. The name is an acronym for "Bolshaya[1] (or Bystrodeystvuyushchaya) [2] Elektronno-schotnaya Mashina" ("Большая электронно-счётная машина" or "Быстродействующая электронно-счётная машина"), meaning "Big Electronic Computing Machine" or "High-Speed Electronic Computing Machine". It was designed at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering
The BESM series included six models.
BESM-1, originally referred to as simply the BESM or BESM AN ("BESM Akademii Nauk", BESM of the Academy of Sciences), was completed in 1952.[3][4] Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes. At the time of completion, it was the fastest computer in Europe. The floating-point numbers were represented as 39-bit words: 32 bits for the mantissa, one bit for sign, and 1 + 5 bits for the exponent. It was capable of representing numbers in the range 10−9 – 1010. BESM-1 had 1024 words of read–write memory using ferrite cores, and 1024 words of read-only memory based on semiconducting diodes. It also had external storage: four magnetic tape units of 30,000 words each, and fast magnetic drum storage with a capacity of 5120 words and an access rate of 800 words/second. The computer was capable of performing 8–10 KFlops. The energy consumption was approximately 30 kW, not accounting for the cooling systems.
BESM-2 also used vacuum tubes.
BESM-3M and BESM-4 were built using transistors. Their architecture was similar to that of the M-20 and M-220 series.[citation needed] The word size was 45 bits.[citation needed] Thirty BESM-4 machines were built. BESM-4 was used to create the first ever computer animation.[5][6] The prototypes of both models were made in 1962–63, and the beginning of the series release was in 1964.[7]
EPSILON (amacro language with high-level features including strings and lists, developed by Andrey ErshovatNovosibirsk in 1967) was used to implement ALGOL 68 on the M-220.[8]
The BESM-6 was the best-known and most influential model of the series. The design was completed in 1965. Production started in 1968 and continued for the following 19 years.[9]
{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) A museum curator suggests Russia's BESM supercomputer may have been superior to the USA's supercomputers during the early stages of the Cold War.