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PEPE came about as a result of predictions of the sorts of [[ICBM]] forces that would be expected in the event of an all-out Soviet attack during the 1970s. Missile fleets of both the US and USSR were growing through the 1960s, but a bigger issue was the rapid increase in the number of warheads as a result of the move to [[multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle]]s (MIRV). Computers designed for the [[Nike-X]] system were largely similar to systems like the [[IBM 7030]], and would have been able to handle attacks of perhaps a dozen warheads arriving simultaneously. With MIRV, hundreds of targets, both warheads and decoys, would arrive at the same time, and the CPUs being used simply did not have the performance needed to analyze their trajectories quickly enough to leave time to attack them.<ref name=silogic/>
[[Bell Labs]], which had been the primary industry partner in previous ABM systems, began development of a new system able to track 200 to 300 missiles at a time. Development was led by [[System Development Corporation]] (SDC), widely considered to be the first [[software company]], which had formed in 1955 to develop the software for the [[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment|SAGE]] air defense computer system. PEPE was designed by a team led by [[George Mueller (engineer)|George Mueller]], formerly of [[NASA]] and [[TRW Inc.|TRW]]. He described the ultimate goal to produce 300 million instructions per second, far in advance of contemporary systems.<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=Tucson Citizen |first=Deirdre |last=Donnelly |title=New computer generation to work much faster |date= 24 September 1976 |url=http://www.silogic.com/PEPE/PEPE.html}}</ref>
An initial testbed system, the "IC model", was built with 16 processors consisting of individual [[integrated circuit]]s and connected to an [[IBM 360]]/65 host. This proved successful, and in the early 1970s, Burroughs won the contract to build a prototype of the full-sized 288-processor version. Burroughs delivered PEPE to the Ballistic Missile Defense Advanced Technology Center (part of US Army's Strategic Defense Command) in [[Huntsville, Alabama]] in 1976.<ref name=Ford/> Testing was apparently successful, but Bell concluded that the machine was too expensive for the sorts of threats being addressed by the [[Safeguard Program]] that was being deployed in the 1970s.<ref name=silogic/>
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