A progress report on computer applications in computer design

The subject of computers designing other computers has been a popular one for several years. This subject generally brings to mind Boolean algebra reduction or generation of design logic. This is a difficult problem which the authors of this paper have investigated only superficially, and is not the subject of this paper. Another aspect of computer development work, however, lends itself to mechanization and represents the greatest portion of the time, money, and manpower consuming business of developing a new computing system. This paper summarizes the progress which has been made to date in writing, debugging, and placing in production a general purpose computer program (ERA 1103) for handling this portion of the development work. This is a program for processing the logical design engineer's work through simulated operation of the proposed equipment to the production of detailed wiring tabulations for manufacturing purposes.