Supercomputers hit their stride

Journal Article · Mon Mar 10 04:00:00 EST 1986 · Electronics; (United States)

OSTI ID:5724788

It was 10 years ago this month that Seymour Cray ushered in the era of the vector supercomputer. His company, Cray Research Inc., delivered the first of the giant superfast machines, the Cray-1, to Los Alamos National Laboratories in March 1976. He spawned an industry that is growing explosively and that continues to break ground in the critical technologies of architecture and circuits, packaging and cooling, and software. Ten years ago, it was generally thought that the total market for such big, expensive machines would be just a handful of systems. Now it looks like a boom market. The impetus for the boom is the need for lots of fast computation. The price-performance ratio of supercomputing has been rising, making it more attractive. Another spur is the new class of minisupercomputers, which has reduced the entry-level cost of supercomputing. The industry leader, Cray Research, Minneapolis, has an estimated 70% of the market, with about 116 systems installed. Second place belongs to the other U.S. maker, ETA Systems Inc., St. Paul, Minnesota ETA, a Control Data Corp. spinoff, now sells CDC's Cyber 205 (about 40 installed) and will introduce its own machine, the ETA/sup 10/, later this year. CDC is still a player, and IBM Corp. has recently joined the ranks with add-on vector processors for its 3090 mainframe computers. In Japan, the three major computer companies, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC, all of Tokyo, now make supercomputers. NEC Corp. has orders for five systems.

• OSTI ID: 5724788
• Journal Information: Electronics; (United States), Journal Name: Electronics; (United States) Vol. 59:10; ISSN ELECA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERS
COOLING
CRAY COMPUTERS
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
MARKET
MICROELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
PERFORMANCE
PROGRAMMING
SUPERCOMPUTERS
VECTOR PROCESSING