TECHNOLOGY
U.S. Expert Evaluates Soviet Computers Their technology has advanced significantly in the past decade, but their hardware lags far behind ours, IBM's Brand feels amazed by Soviet achievements in automation." Out of context this seems as if we were comparing it with what we have in this country. Actually such comments were meant with respect to what our hosts appeared to have accomplished within the Soviet Union. Of course, we were permitted only a limited view of their progress. We saw nothing, for example, of their use of computers for military purposes.
C&EN INTERVIEWS RETURNING COMPUTER EXPERT. Dr. Robert A. Brand of IBM, freshly returned from the First Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Moscow, gives C&EN's D. Gray Weaver his impressions of Russian computer know-how Following the First Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control, held last month in Moscow, newspaper reports have tended to flatter Soviet progress in computer development. Describing western scientists as "amazed" and "shattered" at Soviet devices for automation and control, the lay press may have created a false impression of the over-all picture. Of the 1200 delegates to the congress, nearly 150 were Americans. To check with someone who attended the conference, and who is aware of western work in this field, C&EN interviewed Dr. Robert A. Brand, manager of market development in the process control program of International Business Machines' advanced systems development division in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Originally a physical chemist, Dr. Brand worked in comput48
C & E N AUG. 1, 1960
ing and control instrumentation in petrochemicals before joining IBM. Q. Dr. Brand, what is your reaction to the newspaper reports of the recent computer conference in Moscow? A. Undoubtedly, some of these were exaggerated. It did not seem to me —nor to the other Americans I talked to at the meeting—that the Russians were anywhere near our stage of development in "commercial" computers or control systems. These newspaper reports sound very much like some of those we saw in the Moscow papers during the conference. You see, we would visit institute laboratories and then be asked for comments. Most of us under such circumstances, to be polite, normally comment only upon the favorable things we see. This comes out in the papers as "Western experts are
Q. What do you think of the relative position of Soviet and western computer development? A. That is hard to say with certainty, but it is my impression that while they may be ahead of us in some theoretical aspects of computation and automation, we and others outside the U.S.S.R. are doing extremely good work in other theoretical lines. And so far as commercial equipment is concerned, there is no comparison. They lag far behind us in hardware development. And the West— particularly we in the United States— is far ahead in industrial application. Your recent article on the wide variety of new digital computers (C&EN, June 27, page 90), points this up. Q. There was some comment in the papers about the Soviet self-optimizing systems and about their pneumatic computers. What's the background on this? A. Well, they did tell us about their optimizing controller. This seeks the optimum efficiency of an operation by varying the individual variables. As these factors vary, the electronic control system adjusts the other variables to compensate and maintain the process at its optimum level. We saw one of these instruments and heard reports of their use in two industrial operations—an automatic tube welding machine and an open hearth furnace. It's reported to handle up to 12 variables. Q. How about its use in chemical processing?
A. They reported no self-optimizing systems in chemical plants.
Q. And the ments . . . ?
pneumatic
instru-
A. These were possibly the only thing we saw during the meeting which I have not seen over here. In a pneumatic laboratory we toured, the Russians showed us their developments in pneumatic devices. We saw pneumatic stack controllers, which were—or seemed to be—no different from our conventional controllers. No development date was indicated, but they look very similar to something developed over here some years ago. No more recent elements of this type were shown us. Q. What are their advantages? A. The chief advantage is that such elements stay within a pneumatic system and you need no electrical conversion to a conventional computing element. The Americans I talked to didn't really see any advantage to this. Certainly our present solid state devices protect against explosion or any other hazard in a modern chemical plant or refinery. It didn't seem to me to have any strong practical advantages over what is available in this country. The only place I can see any value might be in some small sequencing operations for batch processing in very explosive atmospheres. Q. These are used for pneumatic controllers, then, and not computers? A. Yes. Theoretically you could construct a computer from these elements, but it would be bulky and very slow. Also it would be a special purpose instrument—very inflexible. Q. Do the Soviets generally use solid state devices or vacuum tubes? A. From what we saw in a visit to the computation center in the institute, they use vacuum tubes. They had two different computers for technical computations, and the equipment was relatively slow by our standards. These machines were doing linear programming—possibly only theoretical problems, at that. As a general observation, the Soviets seem to make very few attempts at miniaturization. Whether the military is getting all the solid state elements, or whether there's just not economic justification for switching over from vacuum tubes, I don't know. There's no real demand for space saving and no real worry
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about heat dissipation. I saw very few areas where they have miniaturized—printed circuits for radios and TV cameras, for example. Q. Just how are computers being used in the Soviet chemical industry? A. One conference report, from the University of Moscow, was about applying computer control to an ammonia plant. This involved not only operation of the individual units of the plant, but over-all economics and scheduling of several of the units as well. This would represent several levels of control. They reported increased temperature stability which prolonged catalyst life but said it hasn't been working long enough for them to determine the over-all economic benefits it produced. We were left with the impression that this might have been merely a prototype development, that it may not actually be operational.
mand structure equivalent to a 1954 American computer, but which looks like a 1948 sequence control calculator and may, on the other hand, incorporate magnetic core memory, characteristic of 1956 models over here. Q. W e l l , are the Soviets using computers to process business data? This is a b i g field over here.
A. Nothing in this line was discussed at the conference. One western conferee spent days trying to visit a computer manufacturing plant near Moscow and finally did get to see an operation where they were producing key punches. From this, one would
Q. This was not a closed loop system? A. No. From the Russian reports, they don't have any true closed loop computer control systems in chemical processing operations. They are doing data logging only. Q.
W h y is that, D r . Brand?
A. Their main trouble seems to be a lack of reliability of equipment. They see nothing to justify any more advanced types of equipment. An operator-guide computer is the next step up, but the Russians seem to feel that it takes too long to correct the process according to instructions from the computer and that the reliability of their equipment is too low. Of course, practical closed loop and central control systems are even more out of the picture for Soviet industry. As a matter of fact, some of the Russians felt that western industrial installations now in use aren't really justified. And some even questioned whether operational automated systems really exist in the U.S.! Q. Don't they see any American publications covering this field? A. I suppose they do. Maybe they think it's just propaganda. I can see how it might be difficult for them to believe that our new hardware over here is actually available. Even their computers at the institute are hybrid designs without miniaturization. And it's hard for some of us, too, to judge Soviet developments accurately. For example, they will have a computer using logical instructions with a com-
"instead of a cash register... an abacus" suspect that there must be some businesses using this type of computer. Unless, of course, they're all going to the military. It is kind of hard to believe that computers are going into business management work over there yet. It's especially unbelievable when you see Russian stores—even the big ones—without cash registers. Q.
N o cash registers?
A. No. Where you expect to see a cash register, you see an abacus. While the Soviet computer researchers are doing good theoretical work, and their engineers are designing workable equipment adequate for their needs, their needs seem not to be too sophisticated yet. Except, of course, for a few highly technical areas. So far as hardware development is concerned, I imagine they are profiting by our mistakes in the western world —they would be foolish not to. But, until there is economic or political justification for all-out development of practical computer systems, the Soviets will remain a considerable distance behind us.
