The Graphics Supercomputer: A New Class of Computer

In 1988 a new class of computer, the graphics supercomputer, was introduced by two start-up companies. As a member of both the supercomputer and workstation families, the graphics supercomputer enables both high-performance computation and high-speed, threedimensional, interactive visualization to be performed on a single, integrated system. In Ardent's TITAN system, high floating point operation rates are provided by combining the fastest RISC microprocessors with traditional supercomputer components such as multiple, pipelined vector processors and interleaved memory systems. This has resulted in much more cost-effective computation and a clear diseconomy of scale over supercomputers and minisupercomputers. For users ofworkstations that lack the benefits of supercomputer components, the graphics supercomputer can be used simply as a workstation which provides fiveto-ten times more performance for important classes of applications.