THE ERA: A NEW SOVIET ELECTRONIC COMPUTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T01003A001000200002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 6, 2000
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 24, 1961
• Content Type: BRIEF

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CIA/RR-CB-61-20
Copy No." c1
24 March 1961
CURRENT SUPPORT BRIEF
THE ERA: A NEW SOVIET ELECTRONIC COMPUTER
OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND REPORTS
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
This report represents the immediate views of the
originating intelligence components of the Office
of Research and Reports. Comments are solicited.
This document contains information affecting the national defense of
the United States, within the meaning of the espionage laws, Title 18
USC, Sections 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of which
in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T-I A-L
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THE ERA: A NEW SOVIET ELECTRONIC COMPUTER
The USSR is scheduling initial series production of a new high-
speed electronic digital computer, designated the ERA, for 1961.
This is the first effort by the Soviet Union to carry into produc-
tion a high-speed digital computer designed primarily for the pro-
cessing and analysis of economic data. Up to the present, very few
computers have been made available in the USSR for anything other
than the highest priority military, scientific, and engineering
activities. Within the Soviet context, therefore, the scheduling of
an economic data handling computer for industrial-scale production
reflects the development of a broader, more flexible production base
within the computer industry of the USSR. Within the international
context, however, the design of the ERA reflects a technology which
is already obsolete in the US and other Free World countries, and the
total number of ERA computers to be produced from 1961-65 represents
only a fractional share of one year's current output of business data
handling computers in the US.
As recently as mid-1959, such comments as the following were
appearing regularly in the Soviet press:
... On the whole, very few high-capacity machines
for economic calculations are in operation.
...While high-speed computers are used on a
large scale for economic operations in the US, such
work is still in the research stage in the USSR. It
is connected with the use of existing computers, such
as the Ural, Strela, and M-3, for economic calcula-
tions. .../S7uch7 existing general-purpose mathemati-
cal machines have been proved not very suitable for
economic calculations. 1/
In December 1960, the first operational ERA computer was being
installed and checked out at the Likhachev Automobile Plant in
Moscow, a "showcase" enterprise frequently exhibited to foreign visi-
tors. The building of five ERA units is scheduled for 1961 and Soviet
plans call for a cumulative total output of 200 units by the end of
the Seven-Year Plan in 1965. 2/ In the US, IBM alone was building
its 704- and 705-series computers at the rate of almost one a day un-
til these machines were phased out during autumn 1959 in favor of
transistorized models. According to present plans, virtually all of
the ERA computers will be allocated to regional computing centers
and industrial enterprises where they are to be used for the automa-
tion of economic data handling. 3/
The unit price of the ERA computer reportedly will range be-
tween 2 and 3 million (old) rubles on a series-production basis. 4/
Preliminary evaluation of the ERA by US computer industry special-
ists indicates that the factory price of a comparable computer pro-
duced in the US would range from $300,000 to $350,000.
24 March 1961 CIA/RR-CB-61-20
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Intrinsic to the design of an economic data processing computer,
and incorporated for the first time by Soviet designers into the ERA,
is the ability of the machine to handle both numerical and alphabeti-
cal inputs. While such alphanumeric computers have been widely uti-
lized in the US and other Western countries for a number of years,
all identified production-line Soviet computers other than the ERA
have been limited in their design to the handling of numerical data
only.
The capacity of the ERA's internal matrix memory (4,096 six-bit
words) and external magnetic tape memory (five storages, each of 500
meters length) must be rated as very small in comparison with the
memories currently available for business data handling machines pro-
duced in the West. Similarly, the 300-lines-a-minute speed of the
printer used for read-out on the ERA is considerably slower than the
speeds achieved by US printers on the market several years ago. At
least as early as 1957, for example, alphanumeric read-out printers
manufactured by UNIVAC, Analex, and Shepard of the US were operating
at speeds of from 600 to 900 lines per minute. 5/
Finally, it is of considerable interest that the ERA is not a
transistorized computer. Although its design provides for a substan-
tial degree of miniaturization through the usg of a large number of
solid state devices such as germanium diodes and ferrite cores, the
other active components of the ERA consist of 3,500 vacuum tubes in-
stead of transistors. In the West and in Japan, design and produc-
tion of computers based on vacuum tube technology has been discon-
tinued owing to the abundant availability of transistors which, for
many computer functions, are superior to vacuum tubes in terms of
miniature size, reliability, service life, low power consumption,
and low heat generation. Implicit in the decision to initiate in
1961 large-scale production of another vacuum tube computer is a
strong indication that the USSR is still confronted by problems in
transistor production which were overcome by the West at least sever-
al years ago.
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Analyst:
25X1A
Coord
1. Promyshlenno-ekonomicheskaya gazeta (Industrial-Economic
Gazette), 4 Sep 59. U.
2. Technical Digest: A Monthly Review of Technology and
Science in Socialist Countries, (Prague: SNTL), No. 12,
Dec 1960, p. 16.
3. Vestnik statistiki (Statistical Herald), No. 5, May 1960,
p. 76. U.
Mekhanizatsiya i avtomatizatsiya pr 'zvodstvo (Production
'Mechanization and Automation), , Aug 1960, p. 50. U.
4. Technical Digest:, loc. cit.
5. Eugene M. Grabbe (ed.), Automation in Business and Industry,
(New York: John Wiley" Sons, Inc., , p. 291.
U.
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