CDC 7600 Supercomputer, LLNL, 1970s
Always eager for better computer simulations, Laboratory weapons designers enthusiastically greeted the arrival of their first CDC 7600 supercomputer in 1969. Nineteen of the first 20 scientific computers purchased by the Laboratory had been from IBM. That string was broken in 1962 when the Lab bought a CDC1604 mainframe from then-upstart Control Data Corporation of Minnesota. A young CDC engineer named Seymour Cray was already at work on an innovative design for a machine 50 times faster than the CDC 1604, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory happily acquired one of his CDC 6600 computers for $8 million in August 1964. Cray's design team then further refined this approach, yielding the even larger and faster CDC 7600 in 1969. In the hands of Laboratory users, these machines defined scientific supercomputing for a decade. Their small instruction sets, fast clock speeds, extremely dense custom-soldered circuit boards, and clever use of the machine frame itself for cooling were ideal for nuclear design and plasma simulations. No photographer credited, circa 1970s.
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