IBM built the NSA Harvest supercomputer code-breaking during the Cold War

 (spectrum.ieee.org)

19 points | by jnord 2 hours ago

3 comments

  • nxobject 21 minutes ago
    As the article belatedly mentions, the ~40 GB automated tape library for HARVEST was the bee's knees... and possibly the inspiration for "harvest now, encrypt later".

    PS – Primary sources for the IBM 7950/HARVEST on Bitsavers, excellent as always:

    https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7950/

  • zkmon 28 minutes ago
    What happened to IBM?
    [-]
    • smolder 5 minutes ago
      They became NSC, no such company.
  • ablation 26 minutes ago
    That one job was to process "sensitive" intelligence intercepts and break codes, if you're not grabbed by the clickbait headline. It's a good read.