Electronic Design NOVEMBER 22, 1962

Molecular circuit logic has beenincorporated in a new high-speed, airborne digital computer.
The equivalent of 20,000 components and 4096 words, of 24 bits each, are packed in a 0.75-ft3
prototype unit that weighs 40 lb.
The computer, dubbed MAGIC, has been under development for some time at General Motors' AC
Spark Plug Div., El Segundo, Calif. It was among several developments described at the
hardware-dominated Spaceborne Computer Engineering Conference....
Still only in the prototype stage, the MAGIC computer is a serial, random-access machine
with a coincident-current, toroidal-core memory with 4096-word capacity. Its logic functions
are implemented with Fairchild Micrologic elements.
Power consumption for the prototype is 90 w, with 66 w consumed in the Micrologic and 24 w
in the core memory. A production model reportedly would weigh 35 lb and take up 0.64 ft3....
There are about 2100 Micrologic elements in the computer. (News, p. 22)


