The rise and fall of IBM's 4 Pi aerospace computers: an illustrated history
SMRTR summary
IBM's System/4 Pi aerospace computers, introduced in 1967, powered critical military and space missions for nearly three decades, from controlling Skylab's gyroscopes to running the Space Shuttle's flight systems through five redundant AP-101B computers. The family evolved from briefcase-sized units executing 48,500 instructions per second to sophisticated multiprocessor systems capable of over one million operations per second, but IBM ended the program in 1994 by selling its Federal Systems Division to Loral for $1.58 billion.
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