A Glimpse of the Past, One View of the Future

Don Cowan Distinguished Professor Emeritus Director, Computer Systems Group David R. Cheriton School of University of Waterloo Who is Don Cowan?

 > 52 years at Waterloo (1960 -)  Founding Chair Computer Science (1966) • 0 to 35 professors, now 75 - https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/about/quick-facts Software engineering research • Making computers easier to use  Helped found/operate some of the spinoffs • (iAnywhere/SAP), LivePage (Oracle)  Retired but still active in research • Direct Computer Systems Group • Interested in democratizing software development An Entrepreneurial U

Coop education (1957 - ) Disdained by other universities – now copied Largest in the world Math contests (1962 - ) Devised by 4 high school teachers – 1962 Brought into the UW Expanded from Grade 7 to 13 (now 12) Now 250,000 student contestants every year UW identifies and attracts the best math students for Math, CS, Eng, Sci An Entrepreneurial U

Computer Science Days (1964 – 1990) Brought 200 Ontario high school students to UW every Saturday for 8 months Taught students to program in 45 minutes Own language – TUTOR Waterloo Computer on Wheels (WATCOW) (1975 – 1980) First portable computer (PDP 11/45) Toured schools making programming accessible An Entrepreneurial U

WATFOR, WATFIV, WATBOL … (1964 - Teach 1,000s of students how to program in (1960) and COBOL (unique) Commercial software inadequate & expensive • Minimum 30 seconds per program and no error indication • Maximum of 2880 per day/Each student took 5 tries • Piles of paper Created software (4 undergrads – 3 months) • 100 milliseconds 300 times faster • Showed exact location of errors Put UW on the map (1000s of copies) The past  1967/68 (45 years ago)  The “Red Room” (in MC)  Housed Canada’s largest computer (IBM 360/75 The past

 1967/68  Backup for NASA space shots  In several science fiction films  Solid-state electronics (transistors) • Same function as today but bigger • Solid state electronics around about 7 years in 67 • Early machines - IBM 1620/7040/7090 • Transistor - ½ cm in diameter • Today CPUs + memory like a speck of dust (mote) • Before 1960 - vacuum tubes (light bulbs with a personality) How did we get it?

Mathematics & Computer Building Student population – 1966 (5634) $5M building + furniture Included Computer (IBM 360/75) as furniture ($8M) – Canada’s largest computer Approved Other Ontario universities complained Funding withdrew UW stepped up and funded from operating budget The past - some comparisons

 1967/68  Central Processor • 1967 - Everyone used Model 75 – clock speed 1 MHz - $3,000,000 • 2013 - Personal computer more powerful – Laptop clock speed > 2 GHz - $600 The past - some comparisons

 1967/68  Random Access Memory • 8 megabyte - $8,000,000 - footprint – 3m x 1m • 8 gigabyte $8,000,000,000 • footprint 3,000 m2 (10 homes) • 2013 – 8 gigabyte $8 thumb-size The past - some comparisons

 1967/68  Hard drives (IBM 2314) • 1967 – 8 drives X 28MB = 224MB $500,000 • Footprint – 4m x 1m • 120 GB - $250,000,000 – 2,000m2 (7 homes) • 2013 – 1 TB (1,000 GB) - < $100 10cm X 10cm We’ve come a long way

 Hardware (faster, smaller, cheaper)  In the 80s predicting $1,000 computers • Now between $100 and $1,000  Premiums in cereal boxes (flash drives)  Hardware as a commodity/appliance • The $50 tablet  Ray Kurzweil “The Singularity is Near” predicts … • Exponential growth • Machine as extension of man or reverse But have we?

 Information is the lifeblood of every organization  Yet building/evolving information systems is complex • just plai