The VAX 9000, code named Aridus or Aquarius, was a family of Supercomputer and mainframe computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA). Aridus was thought as a follow-on the VAX 8800 family line. The VAX 9000 code named Aquarius was positioned by Digital as its first mainframe. In reality it was Digital's second mainframe attempt, following their earlier and more successful 36-bit mainframe line (PDP-6 through DECSYSTEM-20) dating from the mid-1960s through early 1980s. In the beginning was a supercomputer for high clock speeds. The VAX 9000 was introduced in October 1989 and faced problems such as the inability to ship large volumes. It was designed to be water-cooled using the same plumbing as IBM mainframes and code-named Aquarius (“water-carrier”), but were first air-cooled Aridus (“dry”). The first models delivered were "field-upgradeable" to Aquarius as Model 210 follow-on but Digital officials thought nobody will require it so didn't offered it.
Roughly four dozen systems were delivered before production was discontinued. Most sites ran the VMS operating system with a few sites choosing Ultrix. The pedigree of the vectorizing Fortran compiler is not clear.
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