The Social Limits of Speed: The Development and Use of Supercomputers

Authors:
Boeilie Elzen;Donald MacKenzie
Affiliations:
Univ. of Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Univ. of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Venue:
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Year:
1994

Citing 7
Cited 0

The supercomputer era

The supercomputer era
Cray X-MP: The Birth of a Supercomputer

Computer
The TI Advanced Scientific Computer

Computer
Architecture of high performance computers: vol. 1

Architecture of high performance computers: vol. 1
The Influence of the Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories on the Development of Supercomputing

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
The CRAY-1 computer system

Communications of the ACM - Special issue on computer architecture
Parallel Computers Two: Architecture, Programming and Algorithms

Parallel Computers Two: Architecture, Programming and Algorithms

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This article describes the development of supercomputers over the past three decades in conjunction with the social relations surrounding development and use of these machines. In early designs of supercomputers, the goal was to achieve the highest possible speed "at all cost" - that is, without worrying about compatibility with previous machines. The first customers of these computers were national (defense) laboratories and large scientific institutions. Especially over the past decade, however, large industrial corporations have also started to use supercomputers. This expansion of the customer base subsequently affected the design process, as a wider range of customer requirements has to be satisfied and speed considerations are no longer unproblematically paramount.