CDC Cyber
The successor to the CDC (
ControlData) 6000 and 7000 architectures designed exclusively for high-performance
scientific processing, and relied on discrete semiconductors. Both were designed by chief engineer
SeymourCray.
The CDC Star, the first vector-processor, was relabeled the Cyber 200.
The Cyber 170 line incorporated integrated circuits while remaining instruction-set compatible with the 6600 and 7600.
The Cyber 180 series featured a 64-bit word, virtual memory, a predictably full set of
scientific instructions for its traditional market running FORTRAN (
FortranLanguage). Contrary to CDC's history, the 180 series included
commercial instructions used especially in Europe, where CDC mainframes sold well to run COBOL (
CobolLanguage). The 180 series top-of-the-line was its model 990: a
VectorProcessing MainframeComputer, but despite an automatically vectorizing and optimizing FORTRAN compiler, plus a separate object-code optimizer, its performance was reportedly disappointing.
There was also a Cyber 205, produced in a joint venture with
EtaSystems.
For more detail, see the Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber)
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