Lilith (computer)

The vertical screen, keyboard and mouse of the Diser Lilith Vertical tower central unit

The DISER Lilith is a custom built workstation computer based on the AMD 2901 bit-slice processor, created by a group led by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zürich.[1][2] The project started in 1977 and by 1984 several hundred workstations were in use. It had a high resolution full page display, a mouse, a laser printer interface, and a network interface. Its software was written completely in Modula-2 and included a relational database program called Lidas.

Citing from Sven Erik Knudsen's contribution to "The Art of Simplicity": "Lilith's clock speed was around 7 MHz and enabled Lilith to execute between 1 and 2 million instructions (called M-code) per second. (...) Initially, the main memory was planned to have 65,536 16-bit words memory, but soon after its first version, it was enlarged to twice that capacity. For regular Modula-2 programs, however, only the initial 65,536 words were usable for storage of variables."[3]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 See also
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## History

The development of Lilith was influenced by the Xerox Alto from the Xerox PARC (1973) where Niklaus Wirth spent a sabbatical from 1976 to 1977. Unable to bring back one of the Alto systems to Europe, Wirth decided to build a new system from scratch between 1978 and 1980, selling it under the company name DISER (for Data Image Sound Processor and Emitter Receiver System).[4] In 1985 he had a second sabbatical leave to PARC, which led to the design of the Oberon System. Ceres, the follow-up to Lilith, was also released in 1985.

The mouse of the Lilith was custom-designed, and later used with the Smaky computers. It would go on to inspire the first mice produced by Logitech.

## See also

* Kronos, a Soviet competitor of the Lilith

## References

1. ↑ Richard Ohran: Lilith and Modula-2. BYTE August, 1984. pp.181-192 Reprint
2. ↑ Paul A. Sand: The Lilith Personal Computer. BYTE September, 1984. pp.300–311 Reprint
3. ↑ The School of Niklaus Wirth "The Art of Simplicity" by László Böszörményi, Jürg Gutknecht, Gustav Pomberger (Ed.), 2000, Morgan Kaufmann ISBN 1-55860-723-4 & dpunkt, ISBN 3-932588-85-1
4. ↑ Niklaus Wirth A Brief History of Modula and Lilith The ModulaTor, Nr. 0, January 1995

## External links

* Documentation on BitSavers
* Geissman, L et al. (August 1982) Lilith Handbook
* Knudsen, S (1983) Medos-2: A Modula-2 Oriented Operating System for the Personal Computer Lilith
* Wirth, N (1981) The Personal Computer Lilith
* Emulith emulator for the Lilith, homepage and documentation
* Lilith and Modula-2
* ETHistory - Lilith Workstation
* AMD AM2901DC entry on CPU World

* v
* t
* e

Niklaus Wirth

Software|

| Programming
languages|

* Active Oberon
* ALGOL W
* Euler
* Lola
* Pascal
* Modula
* Modula-2
* Oberon
* Oberon-2
* Oberon-07
* Object Pascal

Derivative works|

* Alma-0
* BlackBox Component Builder
* Component Pascal
* Delphi
* Modula-2+
* Modula-3
* Object Oberon
* Zonnon

Operating systems|

* Bluebottle OS
* Oberon System

Formalisms|

* Wirth's law
* Wirth syntax notation
* Wirth–Weber precedence relationship

Books|

* Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs

Hardware|

* Ceres
* Lilith

Workplaces|

* ETH Zurich
* Stanford University
* University of Zurich
* Xerox PARC

Collaborators|

* Luca Cardelli
* Jürg Gutknecht
* Tony Hoare
* Larry Tesler

Awards|

* Turing Award
* SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award
* Fellow of the Computer History Museum
* Marcel Benoist Prize

* Category

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