The batch processing and time-sharing services operated by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) have until recently relied upon two IBM360/195s and an IBM 3032. Both the 195 machines are eleven years old: they are expensive to operate and to maintain and can no longer run modern software or interface with modern peripherals. Council has, therefore, been anxious to replace them at the earliest opportunity and decided at its May meeting to proceed with the installation of an IBM 3081D this summer (delivery took place in July).
Council also agreed that this initial purchase should be followed by the introduction of a second major new processor in May 1983. This second machine is of Fujitsu origin but marketed in the UK by ICL as part of a wider collaboration between the two companies. It has recently been publicly launched as ICL's Atlas 10 system and SERC has agreed to take delivery of the first machine. Once installed, it is intended that the existing IBM 3032 shall be withdrawn thereby completing the replacement of obsolete equipment.
A new node has been added to the STARLINK network. Installed at the University of Durham in March this year, this brings the total number of STARLINK computers to seven.
The STARLINK network was set up by SERC in 1980 to provide interactive data processing facilities for astronomers in universities and in SERC establishments.
Originally the network comprised six DEC VAX-11/780 minicomputers, located at RAL, RGO, ROE, Cambridge, Manchester and London. Apart from substantial memory resources plus disks and other peripheral devices, each of these machines is equipped with two powerful Sigma ARCS colour display systems used in interactive image processing. The six computers are connected to each other by communication lines in a star pattern (hence the name STARLINK) and astronomers use these links to exchange software, documentation, messages and sometimes data.
The computer at Durham is a VAX-11/750. With 2 megabytes of memory, several hundred megabytes of disk and a 125 ips tape drive, it is a machine of considerable power. The astronomers at Durham will use the new computer for a wide variety of work, including the reduction of spectral data from the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope and the analysis of galaxy images on plates taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope. Work is in progress to link this computer with the other six, through SERC'sX25 computer communications network, SERCnet.
