Cray Research Inc yesterday unveiled its entry-level Y-MP supercomputer, a true Cray derivative of the Supertek Computers Inc S-1 mini-Cray X-MP, which Cray acquired when it bought Santa Clara-based Supertek in June last year. The Y-MP-EL system, to ship in December at $300,000 in single-CPU configuration and $1m with the maximum four CPUs, replaces the XMS interim product, which Cray launched a year ago in a hurried attempt to get out a minisupercomputer. Whereas the XMS was fundamentally a Cray-tweaked version of the SuperTek product, the Y-MP-EL retains only around 30% of the original SuperTek design – it conforms with the standard Cray CPU and memory architecture, and runs all Y-MP applications under Unicos, Cray’s version of Unix. All XMS customers are being offered the new minisupercomputer as a straight trade-in, at no extra cost. The entry-level machine features 256Mb to 1,024Mb memory, one to four VMEbus-based input-output subsystems, up to 40Gb disk, expandable to 200Gb with the addition of an auxilliary cabinet. It has a sustained performance of 106 MFLOPS per CPU and a clock speed of 30ns. The thing is intended to stand in the office, is air-cooled and consumes 6KW power (the equivalent of an electric cooker), and measures 5′ by 4′, with a footprint of just over 11 square feet. So far, 18 orders have been received, though most of these are XMS replacements, including General Motors Corp’s Lotus Cars Ltd, British Aerospace and the Ministry of Defence Research Agency in the UK. Watch out for the very high- end C-90, to be launched before the end of the year, likely as the Y- MP/16, which sust ains a maximum 10 GFLOPS, with 16 processors each do ing 1 GFLOPS peak.
