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Celerity Computing
Celerity Computing Inc. was a San Diego, California vendor of Unix-based "supermini" computers. Celerity Computing was founded in May 1983 by Steve Vallender, Nick Aneshansley and Andrew McCroklin. Celerity shipped its first product, the C1200 Personal Workstation in November, 1984. The C1200 was the first in a series of machines using the ACCEL RISC architecture, based on the NCR/32 32-bit processor. The C1200 offered a color monitor with up to 1280 by 1024 resolution. The C1200 was followed by the C1230 and C1260 models. The C1260 offered a dual processor option. The C1230 and C1260 were often used as multi-user systems. The C1200 series ran a version of BSD 4.2 Unix with System V Release 2 functionality merged in. Celerity attempted to make the transition to being a minisupercomputer vendor with the development of the Celerity 6000, based on the ACCEL architecture implemented in ECL based on parts from Bipolar Integrated Technology. The Celerity 6000 had a 33 MHz s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minisupercomputer
Minisupercomputers constituted a short-lived class of computers that emerged in the mid-1980s, characterized by the combination of vector processing and small-scale multiprocessing. As scientific 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 larger supercomputers. 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 in VLSI 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bipolar Integrated Technology
Bipolar Integrated Technology was a semiconductor company based in Beaverton, Oregon which sold products implemented with ECL technology. The company was founded in 1983 by former Floating Point Systems, Intel, and Tektronix engineers. The initial product was a Floating point coprocessor chip set. Later, the company produced the B5000 SPARC ECL microprocessor (never reached production in a Sun Microsystems product, though used by Floating Point Systems) and the R6000 MIPS ECL microprocessor (which did reach production as a MIPS minicomputer). The manufacture of these processors were never really reliable, thus making them prohibitively expensive when compared to competing CMOS products. The company entered the telecommunications market with ATM devices and Ethernet switches. The company was eventually acquired by PMC-Sierra PMC-Sierra was a global fabless semiconductor company with offices worldwide that developed and sold semiconductor devices into the storage, commun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Point Systems
Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Robert Carter. Carter was a salesman for Data General Corp. who persuaded Bouton and Prince to leave Tektronix to start the new company. Winningstad was the fourth partner. History The original goal of the company was to supply economical, but high-performance, floating point coprocessors for minicomputers. In 1976, the '' AP-120B'' array processor was produced. This was soon followed by a unit for larger systems and IBM mainframes, the FPS AP-190. In 1981, the follow-on ''FPS-164'' was produced, followed by the FPS-264, which had the same architecture. This was five times faster, using ECL instead of TTL chips. These processors were widely used as attached processors for scientific applications in reflection seismology, physical chemi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |