CDC 7600

CDC 7600
3D rendering with a figure as scale
Design
ManufacturerControl Data Corporation
DesignerSeymour Cray
Release dateJune 1967[1]
Units sold+75[2]
Price$62 - $155 thousands (monthly rent in 1968)[1]
Casing
DimensionsHeight : 188 cm (74 in)
Width: 302 cm (119 in)[3]
Power95 kW[3] @ 208 V 400 Hz[3]
System
Operating systemChippewa, SCOPE, KRONOS
CPU60-bit processor @ 36 MHz[4]
Memory3.84 Megabytes (up to 512000 60-bit words)[4]
MIPS15 MIPS
FLOPS36 MFLOPS[5]
PredecessorCDC 6600
SuccessorCDC Cyber

The CDC 7600 was designed by Seymour Cray to be the successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s.[6] The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz (27.5 ns clock cycle) and had a 65 Kword primary memory (with a 60-bit word size) using magnetic core and variable-size (up to 512 Kword) secondary memory (depending on site). It was generally about ten times as fast as the CDC 6600 and could deliver about 10 MFLOPS on hand-compiled code, with a peak of 36 MFLOPS.[7] In addition, in benchmark tests in early 1970 it was shown to be slightly faster than its IBM rival, the IBM System/360, Model 195.[8] When the system was released in 1967, it sold for around $5 million in base configurations,[9] and considerably more as options and features were added.

Among the 7600's notable state-of-the-art contributions, beyond extensive pipelining, was the physical C-shape, which both reduced floor space and dramatically[10] increased performance by reducing the distance that signals needed to travel.[11]

  1. ^ a b Adams Survey 1968, pp. 12, legend - 3
  2. ^ In 1978, Science magazine reported that CDC sold "400 of its CDC 6600 models and 75 of its CDC 7600 models."
  3. ^ a b c CDC 7600 site preparation, May 76
  4. ^ a b CDC 7600 Reference Manual, Feb 71
  5. ^ CDC 7600 Presentation by Gordon Bell of Microsoft Research
  6. ^ "CDC 7600". Archived from the original on 2016-05-15. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  7. ^ Gordon Bell. A Seymour Cray Perspective Archived 2016-05-15 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ^ "Control Data Corporation (CDC) 7600: 1971–1983". Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  9. ^ "7600 Supercomputer". Collections. Computer History Museum. Archived from the original on 3 October 2012. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  10. ^ Multiply by a factor of ten.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference gBell.shape was invoked but never defined (see the help page).