Historical Development
CDC had a strong history of creating powerful mainframe computers, with an emphasis on the scientific computing customer base. One of the most famous computer architects to emerge from CDC was Seymour Cray. While he went on to form his own company, Cray Research, work continued at CDC in developing high-end mainframe computers (supercomputers)—led by another famous architect, Neil Lincoln. As Cray competed against CDC, it became apparent to top management that it needed to decrease the development time for the next generation computer—thus a new approach was considered for the follow-on to the Cyber 205.
After spinning off from CDC in September 1983, ETA set a goal of producing a supercomputer with a cycle time less than 10ns. To accomplish this, several innovations were made. Among these was the use of liquid nitrogen for cooling the CMOS-based CPUs.
The ETA10 successfully met the company's initial goals (10 GFLOPS), with some models achieving a cycle time of about 7 ns - considered rapid by mid-1980s standards. They delivered 7 liquid nitrogen-cooled versions and 27 smaller, air cooled versions. The CMOS circuits produced only a fraction of the heat of previous ICs.The planned 1987 follow-on was supposed to be designated Cyber 250 or ETA30, as in 30 GFLOPS. ETA was eventually reincorporated back into CDC, ceasing operations on April 17, 1989.
Read more about this topic: ETA10
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