We are celebrating the 25th anniversary today. Traditionally, because today, 25 years later, this
training center was officially inaugurated. A few months before, of course, the first
computer system was installed here. I myself wasn't there at the beginning. But in the last
25 years, a whole series of things have been done here at the training center. Originally,
the training center was purchased and set up by the university as a central
facility with the aim of enabling all students and scientists at the university to access
computing power from all departments. Before we go into the tour and show you all the
things on site, I would like to start a film that was shot here at the training center
in the early 1970s.
We have a magnetic tape cassette runner here, which combines high capacity and high
transmission rate. If you imagine that the Bible contains 4.5 million characters in the
New and Old Testament, then you can see how often the Bible fits into this cassette.
It has a capacity of 200 megabytes and the Bible would fit on it 45 times. And if this
tape is now mounted and runs, the transmission is 3 megabytes, one and a half megabytes
per second. That means the whole Bible is played on it within three seconds or read
down.
In the meantime, we are standing in front of the 3090 from IBM on one of our large computers.
Unfortunately, our computers today are no longer very photogenic. It doesn't move,
you don't get any light. But what you can still see here are these black
cooling hoses. This IBM is cooled with water. It has a power consumption of about 80
kilowatts and most of it unfortunately converts it into heat. And to get rid of this enormous
heat, we have to cool it with water so that the computer can work at all.
These nine boards here are the entire computer. That's what needed about 100 square meters
of space 20 years ago. This has now been reduced to about 50 by 50 centimeters.
This system here, a system from the 7500 series by Siemens, is our prima ballerina.
It has dimensions of 64, 8 and 22. And by that I mean 64 megabytes of memory,
8 million commands per second and 21 gigabytes of disk storage capacity.
The basic package of our communication system is supposed to be a station system
that we want to use at the respective stations in the clinics. Here we have
prototypically realized what we imagine could be reasonably appropriate,
what functionality is needed for the station system. This is a first thought.
The starting point was that we wanted to have the station list, i.e. the list of patients
on the station, and at the same time a simple access to the central laboratory findings,
i.e. the values required by a patient in the central laboratory.
So, Mr. Klein, what are you actually doing here?
This is a solution to the presentation of the central laboratory findings of the Erlanger Central Laboratory.
Here you see the entrance mask. You have to register with the system.
We have designed it in such a way that if you register with the system as a doctor
and you are assigned to several stations, you get a list of several stations
where you have patients and these processed and found findings.
And this is now our presentation mask. Here you can select.
We have the help function here. The F3 key is for when you are finished processing the application system,
i.e. your patient. If someone else wants to register, you end up back on the lock-on mask.
So here you see the patient's findings. Here we have to do data protection,
because these are really current patient data that are not available to the public.
These are real data that are also available in the intensive care units.
We now have the document that writes the FAU picture.
We now go on from here to the documents that describe the regional computer room
and the department of the RCD.
And what you can see here, whenever I touch one of the document lines with the mouse,
which have a reference to another document, the reference appears below in the screen
on which computer, in which party, the corresponding information can be found.
Here we see the weather map.
Take the other one, it's nice and colourful.
Unfortunately, the weather data is still from last night. No data is available from this morning.
So you can see a view of the earth here.
Here we show an information and teaching system for the Louvre Museum.
The part of the program consists of various information about artists,
about the image genre, image function and a theory part about colour teaching.
The entire system is enriched with multimedia information.
For example, Mozart pieces are played by CD
or film sequences are mixed by an analog image plate on the screen.
In the prelude of the theory part, an introduction video sequence appears,
which in this case is played by a video recorder.
The application itself integrates the media into the image plate, video recorder, CD audio,
images from hard drives and sound files from hard drives.
From the hardware side we see the image plate unit.
We work with an image plate produced by the Louvre Museum.
It contains video sequences and over 20,000 individual images.
This image plate player is controlled by the computer
to display the sequences or individual images
via a video direct integration with a video overlay board on the screen.
We have a relatively normal PC, which was set up as a multimedia device.
In addition, it only contains a CD drive and a sound card.
At the same time, you have the possibility to listen to images and sound.
For example, we have the Bertelsmann Universal Lexicon,
which offers you the normal lexicon function,
but also offers images and small video sequences.
We have a video player, which you can use to play the video.
My name is Jürgen and I am from the social referral
of the independent student association of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.
We work with students with disabilities.
Two years ago, we tried to create a workplace for the visually impaired and the blind.
This came a few weeks ago.
Due to the economic situation, the socio-political situation has worsened.
It is therefore important that the university also improves the conditions for students with disabilities.
This system is a completely normal computer and is combined with a special periphery
with a language and capital letter output.
You see a normal computer here.
Here is an additional computer that only takes care of the language and capital letter representation.
The screen, a completely normal one-to-one representation, is taken over
and we try to enlarge it and synthesize it in terms of language.
These control elements are there to access the screen precisely.
With the slider, I have the possibility to find myself on the screen like a coordinate system.
There are a lot of supporting commands for this.
Here we present the possibilities that the computer center offers in parallel computing.
Since the beginning of the year, the computer center has a parallel computer from Convex,
the metasystem that is shown above in a schematic way.
The actual computing power consists of 12 HP workstations
that are connected to a conventional Convex vector computer,
which, however, is only used as a file server and not for the actual calculations.
I will now restart the calculation of this input.
Here you can see that the scene is distributed over several workstations
that calculate a part of the image independently of each other.
This is possible in this example because the individual calculations are completely independent of each other.
That means that there is no communication between the workstations involved in the calculation.
It only has to be shown which section of the image has to be calculated.
This is the place for the central operator,
who monitors the central systems of the regional computing center in a two-shift operation
and also monitors the essential parts of the network.
What you see here are several viewing screens.
There will be a few more in the near future,
from which you can see the state of the systems, the state of the network.
And if there are interruptions, it can be alerted from here.
This is the beginning of a so-called lead waiting.
In this row of cabinets, the threads of the central computing center run together into the outside world.
This is where all the networks come from,
whether from the university itself, from the city center or from afar,
from the post office, from Munich and elsewhere.
The most interesting thing here at the moment is this third cabinet,
where the threads run into each other in the form of glass threads,
where the glass fiber is laid, which is laid into the city center
and now also into Munich as part of a pilot project.
The convex parallel computer consists of 12 HP processors.
Each processor has a peak power of 200 megaflops
and these 12 machines are connected via a glass fiber network.
In addition, six machines are closely connected via a common memory.
As a result, it is possible to exchange large amounts of data very quickly and efficiently.
The computing center operates an archive server
for storing important data for a long time.
The technology used here comes from commercial television technology.
Video cassettes with a 14.5 GB storage space are used here,
which are transported by a robot to the reading devices.
So this is our best piece, a Cray YMP EL,
a computer from the Cray company.
The company has built the fastest computers in the world for a long time,
but they are also very expensive
and have established a new market segment with this model, with the EL.
The EL stands for Entry Level.
We call it extra slow.
So this machine was much cheaper than the Cray machine normally is.
That's why it's not as powerful as the big YMPs.
This is a machine with two processors.
These are vector processors.
They can only bring their full power when they have to process so-called vectorizable programs.
Then a CPU creates 66 megaflops,
and this machine has two CPUs that then deliver 133 megaflops.
In the shelves behind us we have the servers we need
to distribute software across the whole thing.
We have several PC file servers.
Our main file server is Daphne,
a new file server for the distribution of software to students
and the computer center staff.
Then we have a special file server for secretaries,
for data protection reasons.
We have another file server with which we realize software distribution and courses,
and a file server with exclusively freeware programs,
i.e. programs that are freely accessible to everyone.
What we're doing here is our 34 megabit line between Erlangen and Munich,
or the applications that can run via our 34 megabit line.
Here we have a video transmission between Erlangen and Munich.
In this picture you can see my colleague at the LRZ in Munich.
In this picture you can see the transmission from this camera
that is then sent to Munich.
We also have sound transmission.
Hello Anja, say something.
Hello, how are you?
Accordingly, we show here on the computer the output of the 34 megabit line.
This value indicates how many bytes per second are sent via our 34 megabit line
from Munich to Erlangen.
In this case, that's about 400 kilobytes per second.
The network management should clearly represent the status of the network.
In order to do this, the network can be graphically mapped with a graphical editor
and then assigned objects that can be managed,
that is, through which you can collect status information.
Roughly speaking, you can see here that devices that are functional
or lines that are functional are shown in green
and things that do not work are shown in red.
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the computer center,
not only the transformation of electronics and technology
and the data transmission area is illuminated,
but also these small personal computers,
which have spread quite a bit in recent years.
Today, one of the things is in every second household.
On the left we have the very first IBM PC XT,
purchased at the beginning of the 1980s.
It was our flagship for a long time.
Very amazing performance, 4.7 MHz with 10 MB hard drive and 512 KB of RAM.
On the right, a typically PC, typically means the beginning of the 90s,
an 80486 with 33 MHz, 16 MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive.
We will now demonstrate the difference in performance in the last 10 years of PC development.
I have written down the necessary instructions for this presentation for you here.
I would like to thank you very much that the rector of our university is willing to
in this case, the button would be inappropriate.
That's why we got a red mouse. It wasn't easy.
It looks like a car.
This is also an important area of the German economy.
It has the function of a mouse.
Magnificence, dear colleagues, dear guests, dear friends of the regional computer center Erlangen.
I have the special pleasure and honor to welcome you today on the occasion of the
25th anniversary of the RRZE.
I may not belong to the first generation.
I have been a teacher since 1989 at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität.
But my contacts with the computer center are still a considerable distance back.
For example, I am a proud owner of an operating certificate for the CD3300 system,
the first system of the computer center that came to life 25 years ago.
I would like to thank you all for finding your way to this festive colloquium.
I wish the event and the rest of the anniversary activities a lot of success and may
hand over the floor to Mr. Magnificence.
Thank you very much.
Of course, I cannot have the legitimacy of an operating certificate and whether I am a
sound user, I do not really know, although I can work on a computer from time to time.
But I would like to send you all the best regards and congratulations from the
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität on the 25th anniversary of the regional computer center.
The university appreciates the important work of the computer center and I am pleased
that in the audience there are many representatives not only of the computer center, not only
of computer science, but also from other faculties.
And I especially welcome the former chancellor of the university, Dr. Köhler, who
certainly played a very important role in the construction of this computer center.
I don't see Chancellor Schöck yet, but he actually wanted to come, but maybe he
stopped due to business.
You can also see how important the regional computer center is for the university
.
Seven speeches, that's just as many as at the 250th anniversary of the university.
We are all dependent on your cooperation, advice and support again and again.
And I am pleased that this has so far been done in such a good way.
And I would like to wish you all all the best for the future, a good further development
for the benefit of the computer center, but also for the benefit of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
and its partner.
Thank you very much.
2,500 years of computers, 250 years of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität and 25 years of the computer center.
That has been fulfilling the function of a regional computer center for a long time.
Undoubtedly, the last 25 years have passed us in a breathtaking pace.
We have suffered, we have experienced acting.
Nevertheless, it is appropriate not to simply leave it at the conclusion on such a jubilee day.
How far have we already brought it?
Expert systems, artificial intelligence, distributed intelligence and similar terminology
from time to time suggest that we overestimate what is happening in this area today.
What has now become of the computer center, you will either recognize or at least guess
in the following greetings and speeches.
I mean that it is appropriate on such a day to give some attention to the unspectacular work
and fulfillment of duties of the employees of the computer center.
I hope that the ladies and gentlemen have made plenty of use of the open door that has been offered.
I may, Mr. Dr. Wolff, but maybe representative for all employees,
in memory of the early years of cooperation, hand over a booklet.
And I hope that you will find courage and inspiration to study it
and thus think about our ancient ancestors. Thank you very much.
My connection to the local computer center began long before 1968.
Actually with my very first visit to Erlangen.
In connection with the founding of the Technical Faculty, I was invited in 1964
not to a conversation about my field in computer science,
but to a conversation about computer center concepts.
Yes, and then I was called to the Department of Computer Science.
For more than half of these 25 years I have accompanied the development of the computer center
not only by observing, but I believe with some commitment,
with opinions and many ideas, which often enough
did not correspond to the ideas of the computer center and especially those of Dr. Wolff.
I found an old protocol.
A meeting of 26.01.1971 and two nice passages from it, I would like to quote.
On the one hand, the view is represented that the so-called table computers have little future.
For example, there will already be difficulties with the Sinus and Cosinus in the Juliet-Peckhardt computers.
One million D-marks would be the lowest limit in the middle computers at all.
One had to calculate with three million D-marks.
Incidentally, it can be seen that in view of this situation,
the centralist concept would be necessary.
It also says that the key warned against a centralist super-concept.
The efficiency of such a system was in no way guaranteed.
You can no longer imagine today that the university has existed for 225 years without a computer center
and that computer science is not much older than the computer center.
It has not been mentioned that the computer center is a birth of computer science.
If I am well informed, Dr. Wolff was an assistant at Professor Händler.
The IMMD has the teacher as an essential task and the computer center has always helped us a lot with this task.
We owe the computer center its great commitment to the maintenance of programming courses
and to the provision of infrastructure.
Without the rooms of the computer center, it would be quite tight for the technical faculty and for computer science in particular.
One highlight of my stay in the East was the day when I had to hide behind the computer
because I had to use the computer because otherwise it would have been empty all day
because the deputy head of the computer center was sewing.
Such circumstances are unthinkable in Erlangen.
Minister, Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen.
I am pleased that so many of our invitations to the 25th anniversary of the computer center have been followed
and that in a year in which the university had invited a large number of people to its 250th anniversary.
That is why we have also dedicated ourselves to the emblem of the 250th anniversary.
The computer center was therefore allowed to accompany the university for a tenth of this time.
Exactly the same time frame, namely from 1968 to 1993, 6.7% of the pages of the University Historian's book about the 250th anniversary.
That seems to me too little for the 25th anniversary.
I would therefore have made another suggestion.
Let's take the student numbers since the beginning of the university.
If you look at it very simply, in the last 25 years exactly ten times as many,
namely 67% of the students have visited the university in the last 25 years.
Until the middle of the 80s, the basic tendency in the DfB was also to provide a strong, central machine
to ensure as large a reach as possible, while since the second half of the 80s the basic demand for the construction should have been set in advance.
And I said, the building blocks are getting cheaper.
Of course, that's great news in any case.
As a donor, you can certainly save money.
So let's take a look at that.
I have listed here the investments in DV devices in the Federal Republic of Germany,
namely in the years from 1972 to 1984.
In any case, all DV applications that have been submitted to the Commission for Computer Systems.
That was the time, you remember, central concept.
In Germany, one is average, the other is real, the values ​​of the individual years,
but they are always issued in the following years.
So in the middle of the year, one has spent 100 million marks.
Now come the price-worthy PCs and so on.
We come to the end of the 80s around the factor 2.5.
Of course, I have hidden the fact that the performance for the individual user has multiplied at least a hundred or a thousand times,
which of course means that performance can be on the same table.
Then comes, if you continue the curve, another small bump.
That is the German unit that is here.
Here simply come the new countries.
If you talk to these users who now have to bring up the staff,
then you will sometimes hear the following clear song very gently today.
Ask the single people of Cologne.
Oh, how was it before with the mainframes so convenient?
There was the software once only for networks, only a weak track.
Today everyone has to talk to himself and take care of his system himself.
The data center helps as best it can.
The motto is, even the woman is the man.
Everyone now has to organize, install, partition, implement,
reorganize, import, export, edit, compile,
parameterize and correspond.
Oh, how was it before with the central mainframes so convenient?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor and the pleasure to speak to you here today.
And I would like to talk about data processing in general research,
our experiences and especially on the example of the Max Planck Institute for Physics,
where I lead the preparatory format.
From the G3 time I have here a memory matrix of the G3,
which I had saved when the machine was taken down
and I was allowed to present it to you.
Thank you very much.
The following is a picture from an American report for the Grand Challenges.
He extrapolated the year 2000 and wants to solve various problems in the year 2000,
such as climate modeling, turbulence in the hydrodynamics,
pollution dispersion, distribution of pollutants and so on and so on.
I don't want to go into the details.
I put this film over it, which shows, with this violent point,
where we are today or where we were in 1991,
the Leibniz Law Center.
At the Max Planck Research we had the Cray with four processors.
The single processor is somewhere here at the green line.
What you can also see is that the green line indicates
that the performance of the monoprocessor will only increase more slowly.
We have now acquired a YEL from Cray,
which is absolutely compatible with the Vectron MT.
It is a small parallel computer, only eight processors.
But I don't see that in the next two or three years
we can simply replace the Cray, the vector computer, with a parallel computer.
The time is not yet ripe for this.
I believe that in the next five to ten years,
both principles will still have their significance side by side.
It is a very, very big challenge.
The Grand Challenges will perhaps be the first to be brought to the parallel computers.
Because typically the high-energy physicists say,
quantum chromodynamics, you can do that wonderfully.
There are not so many people who do that.
And these computers will only become interesting
if they really continue to develop products in the everyday course of work,
especially in the industry.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thank you very much.