Minisupercomputer

Minisupercomputers* constituted a class of computers that emerged in the mid-1980s. As scientific computing in the form of vector processors became more popular, the need for lower-cost systems that might be used at the departmental level instead of the corporate level created a market opportunity for new computer vendors to enter the market. As a generalization, the price targets for these smaller computers were one-tenth of the larger supercomputers. These computer systems were characterized by the combination of vector processing and small-scale multiprocessing.

(* not to be confused with superminicomputers )

Some minisupercomputer companies:

• Convex Computer – acquired by Hewlett-Packard
• Alliant Computer Systems – went bankrupt
• Floating Point Systems – acquired by Cray Research
• SuperTek – acquired by Cray Research

The appearance of even lower-priced scientific workstations based on microprocessors with high performance floating point units (FPUs) during the 1990s (such as MIPS' R6000 and IBM's POWER2 ) eroded the demand for this class of computer.