The Minutes of the Meeting held on 11 November 1970 were approved.
The Committee authorised Dr Howlett to commission the design study at a cost of £3,500, and to report on its outcome. They asked that if as a result a request was made to install such a storage unit, a comparison of this with other methods of storage and retrieval - for example, simple racking and manual labour - should be presented.
Dr Howlett said that the Laboratory had intentionally started with a minimal system and was now clear as to the additions needed. It was in fact possible to extend the system much further than was being requested, The Committee noted the reasons for which the disc and extra core store were requested and approved the proposals.
The Committee discussed at some length the need for an input/output station in the Atlas Laboratory as distinct from carrying work to and from the RHEL machine room. The DTI assessor felt that the terminal was not justified, and that it was to be expected that, with so powerful a machine, the Rutherford Laboratory would do work for other users as well as the Atlas Laboratory. Dr Dunworth also was unconvinced of the need and questioned also the real need for providing increased computing power, observing that Parkinson's Law always applied where computing was concerned; he felt that in any event the proposed cost was high, and that it was not obvious that the Rutherford Laboratory could not undertake the work, given the £26,000 a year which the terminal would cost. No other members of the Committee supported these views. Professor Page and Dr Pickavance stressed the need to keep the Atlas Laboratory load separate from the nuclear work of the Rutherford Laboratory and Mr Jolliffe noted that it had been a Council decision to allocate about 20/% of the machine time to the Atlas Laboratory, based on views on the need for large-scale computation in university research work which had been accepted at previous meetings of the Atlas Committee.
The Committee queried the adequacy of the printing capacity provided, which seemed to be about half what was installed for Atlas, but Dr Howlett said that this was deliberate because the Laboratory was intending to use the 360/195 for a different kind of work-load in which long-running jobs would predominate. They wished to be assured that time on this machine would be made available over a long enough period - more than two years - for the service to be of real value to research workers with long-term projects. Dr Howlett said that whilst he could not commit the RHEL he had no fears on this score; Dr Pickavance pointed out that the use of the machine by the Atlas Laboratory was a matter for Council decision, and that in reaching any decision the Council would take into account any representation from the Atlas Committee.
With the reservations from Dr Dunworth and Mr Oakley noted above, the Committee approved the proposal but recommended that the 1130 system should be bought rather than hired on the grounds that firstly it was virtually certain that it would be used by the Atlas Laboratory for long enough for this to be the sounder economic proposition; and secondly that the system was so versatile and generally useful that there would certainly be other worthwhile uses for it within SRC after the proposed method of use was ended. The Committee therefore recommended an expenditure of up to £80,000.
Note: The proposed use of the 360/195 was mentioned in Ace 70/5 (18 May 1970) and 70/6 (17 August 1970).
The Committee noted this paper. No action was requested. Mr Jolliffe said that the need had arisen because the Computer Board had not been able to put its plans for re-equipping the Scottish universities into operation as quickly as it had originally intended. Mr Smith said that the Chairman of SRC had asked for this service to continue and that they would see if the money could be found from SRC funds.
Mr Miller said that the Laboratory - like any other body financed from public funds - was required by the Treasury to devise a costing scheme which would enable it to charge other Government bodies the true cost of any work done for them. It was not a commercial operation, in which charges would be decided by market considerations. There was no unique process for computing the cost of a piece of work and any method had to rest on some assumptions or conventions; those involved in this case were noted in the paper. The Committee questioned some of these, such as the ten-year life assumed for the 1906A and the 40-year life for buildings, and the practice (standard in Government accounting) of writing-off capital at a constant rate when it would seem more realistic to use a high rate initially and reduce this over the life of the equipment. They noted that these were essentially internal matters for SRC and accepted Mr Miller's paper.
The Committee noted the paper. Dr Howlett undertook to circulate comments on his Future Policy paper (ACC 70/8) made by the various Boards and Committees of the SRC. The somewhat self-contradictory situation in Engineering was commented on, with a large amount (about 25%) of Atlas time being used in this field whilst the Engineering Board felt that there was only limited scope for the use of the Laboratory's services in their grants. Dr Dunworth said that the Board's view was coloured by the fact that in an industrial environment one could not afford the cost of large amounts of computing. Dr Howlett reported that the general study of SRC's own computational needs, under Dr Francis, had just started.
Dr Howlett asked the Committee if they would welcome a proposal to have an official opening of the new computer building, with the newly-installed 1906A, in about October. The Committee approved and Dr Howlett undertook to put a detailed proposal to the next meeting.
It was agreed to hold this in late July or August.
