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CDC 6600, the first supercomputer

CDC 6600, the first supercomputer

By Tc foxPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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CDC 6600, the first supercomputer
Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash

It is often regarded as the first successful supercomputer, surpassing the fastest machines at that time by about three to one. It is often regarded as the first successful supercomputer, selling three times more than its previous record holder in the industry, the IBM 7030 Stretch. With 400,000 transistors, over 100 miles of cables, and Freon cooling, the CDC 6600 reaches a maximum speed of 40 MHz or performance of 3 million floating points per second (megaflops).

It cost $ 8 million - about $ 60 million today - and is limited to 40 MHz at a maximum performance of 3 million floating points per second. At the time, the CDC 6600 was the fastest you could think of, and it remained that way until Cray and CDC introduced the CDC 7600 in 1969. This was followed by CDC 7600 in 1969.

He was the first to use the freon cooling system to protect the computer from extreme heat loss and was the first computer with a CRT console. The CDC 6600 has developed the RISC guidance system and the Freon cooling system, both of which add useful features to the modern computer. Considered the first supercomputer, the CDC 6600 operated at 3 megaflops (Mflops) and was the fastest supercomputer from 1964 to 1969. The CDC 6600 was a stepping-stone to the future of supercomputing technology.

Running at 1 MFlop and 10 MHz, it remained the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969 until its successor (CDC 7600) took its place. But it was not until 1964 when Seymour Cray designed the Data Center (CDC) 6600, that we began calling high-speed computers faster. Meanwhile, Seymour Cray began operating on Cray-2, and with a processing speed of 244 MHz and a system performance of 1.9 gigaflops (Gflops), it replaced Cray X-MP as the world's fastest CRI computer. 1985

The old CDC products were based on ERA-built machines, which Seymour Cray was asked to upgrade after switching to the CDC. After the test machine known as Little Character, they introduced the CDC 1604, one of the first ever-changing commercial computers and one of the fastest machines on the market. Two years after leaving the CDC, they released the STAR-100, which was three times faster than the CDC 7600 and was one of the first devices to use vector processing, in which registers and memory were processed to speed up the processing of a single machine. performance. in a large database. With this and other developments, Cray crossed the line with his rivals, and in 1976 CRI released its first vector computer, the Cray-1.

Cray soon focused on changing it, this time to double the performance of the 6600 deployed as CDC 7600. However, this was stopped when the CDC faced some financial difficulties and prioritized other work. the first and only model was submitted to the National Atmospheric Research Center (NRAC) for demonstration.

Similarly, Seymour Cray was chosen as the chief designer but was still completing the first version of the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) based on 1103 and did not leave to join the CDC until its completion. To perform "cleaning" some of the CPU-provided projects, Cray has integrated ten other processors based in part on his former CDC 160-A computer. To handle the household chores of some of the projects he had put on the CPU, Cray included ten other processors based in part on his former computer CDC 160A.

The devices were based on a simple 12-bit CDC 160A, which moved much slower than the CPU, collecting data and "spraying" it on the main memory at high speed with dedicated hardware. CPU font size is 60-bit registers and 60 bits, but the set of instructions is very small because it only deals with information previously processed by the peripheral processor. The CDC 6600 is not a separate I / O system but allows PP to take care of I / O tasks.

This is just as accidental in some ways, as it has allowed designers to develop some of the design features of the 6000 series, such as the ultimate reliance on peripheral processors (PPs), especially the previous ones (called PP0), to manage performance. the entire computer system, including processors. Although the CDC 7600 CPU was very compliant with the instructions for the 6400 and 6600 CPUs, which allowed code handling at a high-level source code source, the hardware of the CDC 7600, especially its internal processor), was very different, and the CDC 7600 needed a different operating system. Unlike the 6600 CPU, the CDC 7600s CPU can control its performance by switching to a central switch (XJ) command, which swaps all registry contents with a central memory.

Another development in supercomputing is that designers have begun to use a variety of processors for their designs. With these new forms of memory and processing, Cray-1 and its descendants became the supercomputing icon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

It was designed by the powerful pioneer Seymour Cray and did not pass up until 1969 another Cray project, CDC 7600. After a testing machine called Little Character, [20] introduced CDC 1604 in 1960, another of the first transistorized trading computers. and one of the fastest machines on the market.

In March 1976, Deputy Secretary of Defense (DOD) William “Bill” Clements invited William “Bill” S. Norris, CEO and president of the supercomputer manufacturer Control Data Corporation (CDC), to a private meeting in the Pentagon. . Clements asked Norris to prepare for "any major component of defensive management or attitude ... confirming opinion" and to speak frankly in his comments. Among the members of the CDC, William Norris was unanimously elected CEO of the new company.

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