 | |
| Industry | Computer systems and components |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1970; 56 years ago (1970) |
| Defunct | 1991 (1991) |
| Fate | Acquired byCray |
| Successor | Cray Research Superservers |
Key people | Norm Winningstad, founder and CEO |
Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was aBeaverton, Oregon vendor of attachedarray processors andminisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by formerTektronix engineerNorm Winningstad,[1] with partners Tom Prints, Frank Bouton and Robert Carter. Carter was a salesman forData General Corp. who persuaded Bouton and Prince to leave Tektronix to start the new company. Winningstad was the fourth partner.[2]
The original goal of the company was to supply economical, but high-performance,floating-pointcoprocessors forminicomputers. In 1976, theAP-120Barray processor was produced. This was soon followed by a unit for larger systems andIBM mainframes, theFPS AP-190. In 1981, the follow-onFPS-164 was produced, followed by the FPS-264, which had the same architecture. This was five times faster, usingECL instead ofTTL chips.
These processors were widely used as attached processors for scientific applications inreflection seismology,physical chemistry,NSAcryptology and other disciplines requiring large numbers of computations. Attached array processors were usually used in facilities where largersupercomputers were either not needed or not affordable. Hundreds if not thousands of FPS boxes were delivered and highly regarded. FPS's primary competition up to this time was IBM (3838 array processor) and CSP Inc.
Cornell University, led by physicistKenneth G. Wilson, made a supercomputer proposal to NSF with IBM to produce a processor array of FPS boxes attached to an IBM mainframe with the namelCAP.
In 1986, theT-Serieshypercube computers usingINMOStransputers andWeitekfloating-point processors was introduced. The T stood for "Tesseract". Unfortunately, parallel processing was still in its infancy and the software tools and libraries for the T-Series did not facilitate customers' parallel programming. I/O was also difficult, so the T-Series was discontinued, a mistake costing tens of millions of dollars that was nearly fatal to FPS. A few dozen T-series were delivered.
Along with the newly introduced, low-end M64/20 and M64/30 floating-point processors, FPS introduced systems based on these processors in the form of the M64/220 and M64/230 "superservers", combining them with theSun MicrosystemsSun-3/50 workstation, offering 6 MFLOPS and 12 MFLOPS respectively, and priced from £125,000 to £200,000, alongside the M64/320 and M64/330 "superstations", combining their processors with theDigital Equipment CorporationVAXstation II/GPX, priced from £160,000 or $187,000 to £230,000 or $275,000.[3][4]
FPS also took the opportunity in 1986 to rename various existing products to incorporate them into the M64 naming scheme, this affecting the FPS-164, FPS-264 and FPS-364 models.[4][5] The performance of these products, described using peak MFLOPS figures in reporting, was also described in more detail in advertising, with the 38 peak MFLOPS of the FPS-264 corresponding to aLINPACK rating of 9.9 MFLOPS and aWhetstone rating of 19 MWIPS.[6]
In 1987, FPS and Digital Equipment Corporation announced a range of VAX configurations that included the FPS M64/30 and M64/60 accelerators. The arrangement included aVAX 8200 system combined with the M64/30 priced at $330,000, and VAX 8550, 8700 and 8800 systems combined with the M64/60 priced from $1 million. The M64/30 was described as a 12 MFLOPS processor, with the M64/60 reportedly delivering 38 MFLOPS.[7]
In 1988, FPS acquired the assets ofCelerity Computing ofSan Diego, California, renaming itself asFPS Computing. Celerity's product lines were further developed by FPS, theCelerity 6000minisupercomputer being developed into theFPS Model 500 series.
FPS was acquired byCray in 1991 for $3.25 million, and their products became theS-MP andAPP product lines ofCray Research.[8]
The S-MP was aSPARC-basedmultiprocessor server (based on the Model 500); the MCP a matrix co-processor array based on eighty-fourIntel i860 processors. After Cray purchased FPS, it changed the group's direction by making themCray Research Superservers, Inc., later becoming theCray Business Systems Division (Cray BSD). The MCP was renamed theCray APP. The S-MP architecture was not developed further. Instead, it was replaced by theCray Superserver 6400, (CS6400), which was derived indirectly from a collaboration betweenSun Microsystems andXerox PARC.
Silicon Graphics acquired Cray Research in 1996, and shortly afterward the Cray BSD business unit along with the CS6400 product line was sold to Sun Microsystems for an undisclosed amount, acknowledged later by a Sun executive to be "significantly less than $100 million",[9][10] and estimated to be as low as $17 million.[11]: 22 Sun was then able to bring to market the follow-on to the CS6400 which Cray BSD was developing at the time, codenamedStarfire, launching it as theUltra Enterprise 10000multiprocessor server. Sun reportedly sold 7,000 of these systems priced at around $1 million, generating "five billion plus of margin".[11]: 11 This system was followed by theSun Fire 15K and Sun Fire 25K. These systems allowed Sun to become a first tier vendor in the large server market. In January 2010,Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation.