illiac iv

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illiac iv - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Illiac IV
  
     <computer> One of the most infamous supercomputers ever.  It
     used early ideas on SIMD (single instruction stream,
     multiple data streams).  The project started in 1965, it used
     64 processors and a 13MHz clock.  In 1976 it ran its first
     sucessfull application.  It had 1MB memory (64x16KB).
  
     Its actual performance was 15 MFLOPS, it was estimated in
     initial predictions to be 1000 MFLOPS.  It totally failed as a
     computer, only a quarter of the fully planned machine was ever
     built, costs escalated from the $8 million estimated in 1966
     to $31 million by 1972, and the computer took three more years
     of enginering before it was operational.
  
     The only good it did was to push research forward a bit,
     leading way for machines such as the Thinking Machines
     CM-1 and CM-2.
  
     (1995-04-28)