Managing the development of ILC´s distributed VME Mainframe

In November 1981 ILC and Fujitsu signed a chip collaborative contract whereby the Mainframe Division of ICL, based at West Gorton, Manchester were able to build a Distributed Mainframe system, using the C8000 gate CMOS gate array being developed by Fujitsu Semiconductor Division based at Kawasaki Japan. The scope of the design involved 4 major units: Processor, Store, Input/Output Controller and Disc/Magnetic Tape Controller. In all there were 42 chip types to design plus Local Area Networks (LAN) for all Input/Output controllers including a fibre optic high speed LAN for fast peripherals and ETHERNET for low speed devices. Having chosen the vendor for the technology, the main problem facing the management team was the construction of the overall project plan which covered all aspects of hardware and software design, systems integration and product introduction. The elements of the plan relevant to this paper are the validation of the technology and the hardware design