 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Minisupercomputer" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Minisupercomputers constituted a short-lived class ofcomputers that emerged in the mid-1980s, characterized by the combination ofvector processing and small-scalemultiprocessing. Asscientific computing using vector processors became more popular, the need for lower-cost systems that might be used at the departmental level instead of the corporate level created an opportunity for new computer vendors to enter the market. As a generalization, the price targets for these smaller computers were one-tenth of the largersupercomputers.
Several notable technical, economic, and political attributes characterize minisupercomputers. First, they were architecturally more diverse than prior mainframes and minicomputers in hardware and less diverse in software. Second, advances inVLSI made them less expensive (mini-price). These machines were market targeted to be cost-effective and quickly manufactured. Third, it is notable who did not manufacture minisupercomputers: within the USA, IBM and the traditional mainframe makers, outside the USA: the Japanese supercomputer vendors and Russia (despite attempts to manufacture minicomputers).
The appearance of even lower-priced scientificworkstations (e.g., Dana Computer/Ardent Computer/Stellar Computer (the merger of these companies)) based onmicroprocessors with high performancefloating point units (FPUs) during the 1990s (such as theMIPSR8000,IBMPOWER2), andWeitek eroded the demand for this class of computer.
The industry magazineDatamation coined the term "Crayette" which in short order meant instruction set compatible toCray Research, Inc.
This list is sorted alphabetically, and many entries here are to companies that no longer exist.
| Micro |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Midrange | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Large | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Others | |||||||||||||||||||||||
