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The Cray Y-MP was a supercomputer
Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research....
 sold by Cray Research
Cray

Cray Inc. is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray....
 from 1988, and the successor to the company's X-MP
Cray X-MP

The Cray X-MP was a supercomputer designed, built and sold by Cray. The company's first parallel processing vector processor machine and a fourth generation super, it was the 1982 successor to the 1976 Cray-1, and the world's fastest computer 1983–1985....
. The Y-MP retained software compatibility with the X-MP, but extended the address registers from 24 to 32 bits. High-density VLSI ECL
Emitter coupled logic

In electronics, emitter-coupled logic, or ECL, is a logic family in which current is steered through Bipolar junction transistors to implement logic functions....
 technology was used and a new liquid cooling system was devised. The Y-MP ran the Cray UNICOS
Unicos

UNICOS is the name of a range of Unix-like operating system variants developed by Cray Inc. for its supercomputers. UNICOS is the successor of the Cray Operating System ....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
.

The Y-MP could be equipped with two, four or eight vector processors, with two functional units each and a clock cycle time of 6 ns (167 MHz).






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The Cray Y-MP was a supercomputer
Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research....
 sold by Cray Research
Cray

Cray Inc. is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray....
 from 1988, and the successor to the company's X-MP
Cray X-MP

The Cray X-MP was a supercomputer designed, built and sold by Cray. The company's first parallel processing vector processor machine and a fourth generation super, it was the 1982 successor to the 1976 Cray-1, and the world's fastest computer 1983–1985....
. The Y-MP retained software compatibility with the X-MP, but extended the address registers from 24 to 32 bits. High-density VLSI ECL
Emitter coupled logic

In electronics, emitter-coupled logic, or ECL, is a logic family in which current is steered through Bipolar junction transistors to implement logic functions....
 technology was used and a new liquid cooling system was devised. The Y-MP ran the Cray UNICOS
Unicos

UNICOS is the name of a range of Unix-like operating system variants developed by Cray Inc. for its supercomputers. UNICOS is the successor of the Cray Operating System ....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
.

The Y-MP could be equipped with two, four or eight vector processors, with two functional units each and a clock cycle time of 6 ns (167 MHz). Peak performance was thus 333 megaflops per processor. Main memory comprised 128, 256 or 512 MB of SRAM.

Cray Y Mp Gsfc
The original Y-MP (otherwise known as the Y-MP Model D) was housed in a similar chassis to the horseshoe-shaped X-MP, but with an extra rectangular cabinet added in the middle (containing the CPU boards), thus forming a "Y" shape in plan view. The system could be configured with one or two Model D IOSs (Input/Output Subsystems) and an optional Solid State Disk (SSD) of 256 MB to 4GB capacity.

The Model D Y-MP was superseded in 1990 by the Y-MP Model E, which replaced IOS Model D with IOS Model E, providing twice the I/O throughput. The Y-shaped chassis was dropped in favor of one or two rectangular cabinets (each with a separate connected cabinet containing the liquid cooling system), depending on configuration. Maximum RAM was increased to 2 GB and up to eight IOSs were possible. Model E variants included the Y-MP 2E, Y-MP 4E, Y-MP 8E and Y-MP 8I, the latter being a single-cabinet (I for Integrated) version of the two-cabinet 8E. The 2E and 4E were later available with optional secondary air cooling.

The Y-MP M90 was a large-memory variant of the Y-MP Model E introduced in 1992. This replaced the SRAM of the Y-MP with up to 32 GB of slower, but physically smaller DRAM
Dram

Dram or DRAM may refer to:* Dram , an imperial unit of mass and volume* Armenian dram, a monetary unit* Dynamic random access memory* Database of Recorded American Music...
 devices. The Y-MP M90 was also available in variants with up to two, four or eight processors (M92, M94 and M98 respectively). Later, the model name was abbreviated to the Cray M90 series.

The Y-MP C90
Cray C90

The Cray C90 series was a vector processor supercomputer launched by Cray Research in 1991. The C90 was a development of the Cray Y-MP architecture....
 series is described separately.

Processor Board Cray 1 Hg

Y-MP EL

In 1992, Cray launched the cheaper Y-MP EL (Entry Level) model. This was a reimplementation of the Y-MP architecture in CMOS
CMOS

Complementary metal?oxide?semiconductor , is a major class of integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, Static Random Access Memory, and other digital logic circuits....
 technology, based on the S-2 design acquired by Cray from Supertek Computers
Supertek Computers

Supertek Computers Inc. was a computer company founded in Santa Clara, California in 1985 by Mike Fung, an ex-Hewlett-Packard project manager, with the aim of designing and selling low-cost Cray-compatible minisupercomputers....
 in 1990. The EL was an air-cooled system with a completely different VMEbus
VMEbus

VMEbus is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of Central processing unit, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as American National Standards Institute/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1014-1987....
-based IOS. EL configurations with up to four processors (each with a peak performance of 133 megaflops) and 32 MB to 1 GB of DRAM
Dram

Dram or DRAM may refer to:* Dram , an imperial unit of mass and volume* Armenian dram, a monetary unit* Dynamic random access memory* Database of Recorded American Music...
 were available. The Y-MP EL was later developed into the Cray EL90
Cray EL90

The Cray EL90 series was an air-cooled vector processor supercomputer first sold by Cray Research in 1993. The EL90 series evolved from the Cray Y-MP EL minisupercomputer, and is compatible with Y-MP software, running the same UNICOS operating system....
 series (EL92, EL94 and EL98).

The Y-MP EL came in a cabinet much smaller than the traditional room-filling Cray systems – 62×50×32 inches or 2010×1270×810 mm (height × width × depth) and 1400 lb/635 kg in weight – and could be powered from regular mains power.

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