TX-2
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer was the successor to the Lincoln TX-0 and was known for its role in advancing both artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction. Wesley A. Clark was the chief architect of the TX-2.
Specifications
The TX-2 was a transistor-based computer using the then-huge amount of 64K 36-bit words of magnetic-core memory. The TX-2 became operational in 1958. Because of its powerful capabilities, Ivan Sutherland's revolutionary Sketchpad program was developed for and ran on the TX-2. One of its key features was the ability to directly interact with the computer through a graphical display.The TX-2 had 32 modes of predication, innovative bitmanipulation instructions and is likely one of the very first processors with SIMD within a register, used in Sutherland's Sketchpad:
...the Lincoln Lab’s TX-2 computer offered instructions that operated on the ALU as either one 36-bit operation, two 18-bit operations, or four 9-bit operations...
Sketchpad did in fact take advantage of these SIMD instructions, despite TX-2 appearing before invention of the term SIMD.
The compiler was developed by Lawrence Roberts while he was studying at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
In 1964 the TX-2 was extended with the APEX time-sharing system. This included a hardware memory-management unit named SPAN which employed thin-film memory.