ISPW

2023-08-04T22:54:31Z

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The '''IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation''' ('''ISPW''') was a hardware [[digital audio workstation ]] developed by [[IRCAM]] and the Ariel Corporation in the late 1980s. In [[French language|French]], the ISPW is referred to as the SIM (''Station d'informatique musicale''). Eric Lindemann was the principal designer of the ISPW hardware as well as manager of the overall hardware/software effort.

It consisted of up to three customized DSP boards that could be plugged into the expansion [[computer bus|bus]] on a [[NeXT]] Computer (a "cube"). The ISPW could then run a customized real-time audio processing [[Server (computing)|server]] on the hardware boards controlled by a [[client (computing)|client]] application on the NeXT.

Each ISPW card had two [[Intel i860]] microprocessors (running at 80 [[FLOPS|MFLOPS]]). An additional card with eight channels of [[Sound|audio]] I/O was also available for multi-channel sound recording and playback. A three-board ISPW provided what was at the time unsurpassed signal processing and audio synthesis power on a single workstation. A single ISPW card cost approximately $12,000US (not including the computer), which made it prohibitively expensive outside of research institutes and universities.

[[Image:ISPW - IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation.jpg]]

And the I860 board :

[[Image:M860 - ISPW card.jpg]]

The main server software developed by IRCAM for the ISPW was called FTS ("Faster Than Sound"). The main NeXT client application was a graphical program called [[Max (software)|Max]], developed by [[Miller Puckette]]. A commercial version of Max (without the FTS server) was licensed by IRCAM to Opcode Systems (and, later, [[Cycling '74]]).

Max/FTS eventually migrated to a software-only application for [[Silicon Graphics|SGI]] and [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]] Alpha computers. It is the direct predecessor to [[jMax]].

See also [[pure data|Pd]].

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090603230029/http://freesoftware.ircam.fr/article.php3?id_article=5 A brief history of MAX], from IRCAM

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[[Category:Computer music]]
[[Category:Computer workstations]]
[[Category:NeXT]]
[[Category:Digital signal processors]]

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ISPW