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From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What with these Vector's anyways?
Message-ID: <13668@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Mon, 3-Aug-87 14:47:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.13668
Posted: Mon Aug  3 14:47:16 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Aug-87 04:07:18 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 13
Keywords: vector Cray Cyber CDC Cpu Supercomputers

> While I'm not as exposed to supercomputers as Hugh, in my experience
> the term supercomputer is only applied to extremely fast scalar processors
> with attached vector processors.

This is not true.  This definition is perpetrated by mainframe manufacturers
who try to sell their machines as supercomputers with attached boxes usually
from FPS (Fly-by-night Convolvers).  Supercomputers are as previously defined
extremely fast (and hence generally expensive) computers.  They may accomplish
this through use of vectors and parallelism but it is generally the number of
floating point operations per second that characterize the system.  Generally,
only machines that provide a homogenous approach are considered.

-Ron