Introductory Remarks for the Panel Discussion on Computer Control

The control environment of the Bevatron is divided into a system of well-defined tasks, each capable of being treated individually but not separately. To maintain the individual aspect, but integrate all of the component tasks into a system structure, ours is the "multi-processor" concept of system organization. It was recognized that bulk-storage elements could not be provided separately for each processor, and in fact, advantage could be gained by utilizing the moderate speed disc-storage as a common-memory element thereby allowing the main-frame memory of each mini-computer to act as "cache" memory for each arm of the quasi-multiprocessor. This allows the use of overlay techniques to provide an apparent vastly expanded software capability.