Supercomputer Vendors

Alex Informatique SA. (Annecy, France.)

Alex makes clustered Windows NT-based multimedia machines and servers, and accompanying software.

Alta Technology, Inc. (Sandy, UT, USA.)

Clusters of Alpha and Intel CPUs running Linux, with Ethernet connectivity and good old PVM/MPI doing the message passing. Founded in 1988.

Chen Systems Corp: bought by Sequent.

The server business unit was bought by Sequent in June of 1996, making Steve Chen the Chief Technology Officer of Sequent in the process.

Convex Computer Corporation: bought by Hewlett-Packard.

Convex (Richardson, Texas, USA) was founded in 1982 and originally made vector and then vector parallel supercomputers using custom CMOS processors, a sort of poor-man's Cray. Convex also started using HP's scalar PA-RISC chips in 1992, the same year HP bought five percent of Convex. In 1994 HP became a VAR of Convex's Exemplar product line, which HP continued to offer after the merger. HP completed its acquisition of Convex on 20 December 1995, as owners of Convex stock (NYSE: CNX) were given 0.0593 of a share of HP stock for each share of Convex stock that they owned (HP stock was worth about $81.50 a share at that time). The Convex name is dead, with HP having dropped the SPP-1x00 lines, but the Exemplar name lives on in several new D-, K- and V-class enterprise servers.

Cray, Inc.: Formed by Tera, in Seattle, WA, buying the part of SGI which was Cray Research, located in Chippewa Falls, WI and Eagan, MN.

Cray Research, Inc.: bought by Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Cray made vector parallel supercomputers, along with the occasional scalar machine such as the T3D and T3E. SGI kept the Cray name alive, with SGI still offering the Cray T90, T3E and the new SV1. Some of that which was Cray Research was sold to Tera, forming Cray, Inc.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC): bought by Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ)

DEC was slowly sold off in pieces by its last management team. I have a great write-up of this process somewhere, and as soon as I find it I'll post a very brief summary of it here.

Fujitsu Limited. (Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan.)

Another mammoth company, Fujitsu makes telecommunications equipment, semiconductors, vector and scalar parallel computers, printers and many other things. Founded 20 June 1935.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) (Palo Alto, CA, USA.) (NYSE: HWP)

A mammoth company that makes plenty of products. Founded in 1938 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard.

Hitachi.

International Business Machines (IBM.)

If you don't know what IBM is, I can't help you.

Integrated Computer Engines, Inc. (Waltham, MA.)

Eight CPUs on one PCI card, pumping out 3.2 GLFOPS Peak, for 3D and special effects graphics on Macs or NTs.

Intel Supercomputer Systems Division.

Meiko.

NEC Corporation. (NASDAQ: NIPNY)

Another mammoth company based in Japan, making computers, semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. Founded in 1899 as Nippon Electric Co, Ltd.

Parsytec Computer GmbH.

Pyramid Technology Corp: bought by Siemens.

Acquired by Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG in March of 1995, and now is their Pyramid Technology Unit. They make scalar MIPS RISC desktop workstations and parallel supercomputers running UNIX.

Sequent Computer Systems. (Beaverton, OR, USA.) (NASDAQ: SQNT)

Sequent makes Intel-based SMP and NUMA systems/clusters running UNIX or Windows NT, and sells these systems integrated with data bases such as Oracle and SAP, along with the usual array of OLTP and web server applications. Founded in January of 1983.

Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG (Frankfurt/Main, BDR.)

Siemens is a massive company, there isn't much that they don't make. Their computer line consists of scalar MIPS RISC desktop workstations and parallel supercomputers running UNIX, and scalar Intel laptops and desktops running Windows. I had the great pleasure of working with one of their 1960's-vintage Kyrstalloflex IV X-ray machines while in college.

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (Mountain View, CA, USA.) (NYSE: SGI)

SGI makes scalar MIPS RISC desktop workstations and parallel supercomputers running UNIX, along with Intel/NT workstations and Intel/Linux multiprocessor machines. Their Cray division makes vector and scalar parallel supercomputers running UNIX.

Supercomputer Systems AG.

Founded by a Professor at the Swiss Federal Insitute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, S.C. makes a desktop 1.6 GFLOPS parallel computer runing Compaq/DEC UNIX, and has a PCI card that turns Intel Pentium or Compaq/DEC Alpha PCs into a distributed memory computer running Linux, Compaq/DEC UNIX, or MS Windows NT.

Tera Computer Company (Seattle, Washington, USA.) (NASDAQ: TERA)

Tera bought the Cray part of SGI, and is now called Cray, Inc.

Thinking Machines Corporation (Burlington, MA, USA.)

The hardware arm has been owned by Gores Technology Group since March of 1997 and is now called Connection Machines Services, Inc. (Boulder, Colorado, USA). The software arm, still called TMC, now makes parallel, scalable data mining software.

Other vendor lists

• Hensa's vendor list.
• David Bader's list of supercomputer vendors.

Currently maintained by pen7cmc.

Previously this was part of the Supercomputer GIFs page.