\ aT ce TT FEATURE Basic computer competency is now an essential part of the school curriculum in much of the Soviet Union, focusing on the ninth and tenth forms, the final two years of high school. Above, learning how to operate basic software during a computer Class at Moscow’s school No. 609. School children are introduced to computer concepts with this oversized ‘‘Chebu- rashka”’ electronic calculator. The calculator is based ona popular Soviet animated cartoon for children and winks when the correct answer is provided. Computers in the Soviet Union By VLADIMIR GUREVICH Any U.S. school child knows that the first country to develop a computer was the U.S. But few people know that the second coun- try was the Soviet Union, in 1950. And still fewer people know tht the first step was actually made in Soviet Russia in 1918, a year after the socialist revolution, when M. Bonch-Bruevich developed an electronic Telay circuit with two. stable states, later own in the West as a trigger. _ Academician Nikita Moiseyev visited Western computer centres in the late 1950s and found that the Soviets were at a similar level of development in both methods and computers themselves. Soviet advances toward developing the computer industry slowed down, however, due to mistakes in approaches and a shortage of funds, which Were needed for the iron, steel, construction, and transport industries. A vastr housng Program was in progress, and the Eastern Tegions were being developed ona large scale. Consequently, while the USSR was well- equipped to deal with the world energy crisis of the 1970s, technology lagged. At the turn of the 1980s, however, the USSR scored new successes in this field. The Soviet electronics industry became one of the world’s biggest producers of electronic components. Today, 30,000 kinds of com- Ponents are exported to more than 30 coun- tries, Electronic components marked “made in the USSR” are used in France, Britain, taly, and Spain. General Motors used to buy 150-80 million resistors from the USSR annually. When the Soviet Vega craft feached Halley’s comet, Western experts confirmed the high level of USSR’s compu- ler technology. : : The notion of a vast, unbridgeable lag in ‘lectronics in the Soviet Union, while par- tially based on fact, is a far cry from the truth. For example, while until recently the USSR did not mass-produce personal com- puters, the situation in super-computers is entirely different. Yet, Western media continue to speak of a lag. At the end of last year, for example, Fortune magazine claimed that the Soviets did not produce anything that could even approach American super-computers, which can do 100 million operations a second and more. But several years ago the USSR deve- loped its Elbrus-2 computer, capable of 120- 150 million operations a second. In the early part of the 1980s, the USSR started regular production of PS-2000 computers with a speed of 200 million operations per second, on a par with the best U.S. computers. The difference lay elsewhere. To begin with, the Soviet super proved to be much less expensive, about a million dollars (at the official exchange rate), or one-fifth to one-eighth as high as machines of the same class on the world market. Second, it was based on an entirely new, recursive (or parallel) architecture, which attracted par- ticular attention among Western computer leaders such as Control Data, which at once offered to co-operate. Washington’s elec- tronic embargo vetoes such projects, how- ever, but the USSR went on to develop this technology independently, and now it is being used to develop the super-computer of a new generation. This new super- computer will have a speed of more than 10 billion operations a second and will apply principles of artificial intelligence. Its com- ponents will be micro-circuits with an unheard-of-density of elements — up to 10 million per square centimetre. Another major step will be to put into operation in a year’s time a network of computer centres of the Soviet Academy of fe hay | ] friends Season’s Greetings to our from the executive and membership of the Canada-USSR Friendship Society c/o 3751 Selkirk St. Vancouver, B.C. V6H 2Y3. 731-3048 Sciences on a nationwide scale. It will inte- grate eight regional computer networks in European USSR, in the Urals, in Central Asia, Siberia, and the Far East. Concentration of resources and accelera- tions of the entire industry linked with com- puter technology is today a reality of the Soviet economy. In the current five-year period (1986-1990), its output is to grow 2.5 times, and capital investments three times. Soviet personal computers have been put into regular production — both for train- ing purposes and for home use. The latter will cost as much as a conventional TV at first, and its price will probably eventually be cut by half. The annual output of per- - sonal computers is expected to reach mil- lions. Half of all the personal computers to be manfuactured in this five-year period will be for schools. As many as 70,000 mathemat- ics and physics teachers have been trained for computer instruction, and computer clubs and entertainment centres are spring- ing up. For all that, Soviet specialists have not succumbed to euphoria and have not lost their ability for self-critical assessment. The quality of computer equipment, notes Yev- geny Velikov, vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is still slightly below par, but developments indicate that this will HOLIDAY GREETINGS in this International Year of Peace BETTY GREENWELL be overcome in the current five-year period. The staff of the computer methods labora- tory at Moscow State University have devised a new personal computer model with an additional built-in processor that they say may become the best school com- puter in the world. With all the variety of design solutions and fundamental research, it is the intro- duction of computers into mass production that has often proved the stumbling block. Here, a good deal depends not on technol- ogy, but on updating economic machinery, management, and incentives. This is why the radical economic reform now being carried out in the USSR, greatly affecting technological progress, is one of the key conditions for success in the Soviet electronic industry on a large scale. This reform, coupled with new approaches to financial, investment and structural policies and the concentration of funds on priority areas, will make it possible to achieve results that in the not so distant past seemed to be far off in the future. — Novosti Press Agency Season’s Greetings to family, friends and comrades — for peace and social progress Jennie and Jack Phillips Association of United Ukrainian Canadians : Greetings to our members and == supporters for this holiday season. May the New Year be the year of peace throughout our planet. You are invited to the special Malanka (Ukrainian New Year) celebration, on Saturday, Jan. 17, 1987, 6 p.m. at 805 E. Pender St. Advance tickets only. Phone: 253-3038 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 17, 1986 e 21 ani