The Cray Superserver 6400, or CS6400, is a discontinued

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

computer system produced by Cray Research Superservers, Inc., a subsidiary of

Cray Research Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

, and launched in 1993. The CS6400 was also sold as the Amdahl SPARCsummit 6400E. The CS6400 (codenamed ''SuperDragon'' during development) superseded the earlier SPARC-based Cray S-MP system, which was designed by

Floating Point Systems Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prints, Frank Bouton and Rob ...

. However, the CS6400 adopted the XDBus packet-switched inter-processor bus also used in

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

' SPARCcenter 2000 (''Dragon'') and SPARCserver 1000 (''Baby Dragon'' or ''Scorpion'')

Sun4d Sun4d is a computer architecture introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992. It is a development of the earlier Sun-4 architecture, using the XDBus system bus, SuperSPARC processors, and SBus I/O cards. The XDBus was the result of a collaboration ...

systems. This bus originated in the

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

Dragon multiprocessor workstation designed at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

. The CS6400 was available with either 60

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

SuperSPARC-I or 85 MHz SuperSPARC-II processors, maximum RAM capacity was 16 GB. Other features shared with the Sun servers included use of the same

SuperSPARC The SuperSPARC is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Sun Microsystems. 33 and 40 MHz versions were introduced in 1992. The SuperSPARC contains 3.1 million transistors. It was fabrica ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

and

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. However, the CS6400 could be configured with four to 64 processors on quad XDBusses at 55 MHz, compared with the SPARCcenter 2000's maximum of 20 on dual XDBusses at 40 or 50 MHz and the SPARCserver 1000's maximum of 8 on a single XDBus. Unlike the Sun SPARCcenter 2000 and SPARCserver 1000, each CS6400 is equipped with an external

System Service Processor The System Service Processor (often abbreviated as SSP) is a SPARC-based computer that is used to control the Sun Microsystems Enterprise 10000 platform. The term SSP is often used to describe both the computer hardware and the software that are ...

(SSP), a

SPARCstation The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines are a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and server (computing), servers in desktop, desk side (pedestal) and rack-based form factor configurations, that were developed and sol ...

fitted with a

JTAG JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group which codified it) is an industry standard for verifying designs of and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture. JTAG implements standards for on-chip instrumentation in electronic design ...

interface to communicate with the CS6400 to configure its internal bus control card. The other systems have a JTAG interface, but it is not used for this purpose. While the CS6400 only requires the SSP to be used for configuration changes (e.g. a CPU card is pulled for maintenance), some derivative designs, in particular the

Sun Enterprise 10000 Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server (computing), server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001. The line was launched as the Sun Ultra Enterprise series; the ''Ultra'' prefix was dropped around 1998. These systems are based ...

, are useless without their SSP. Upon

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

' acquisition of Cray Research in 1996, the Superserver business (by now the Cray Business Systems Division) was sold to Sun. This included ''Starfire'', the CS6400's successor then under development, which became the Sun Enterprise 10000.

References

External links

"Cray: Faster Than A Bottleneck Bullet", ''Byte'', January 1996

Enthusiast photographs

Running system (circa 2004)

{{Cray computers Cs6400 Sun servers Supercomputers 32-bit computers Computer-related introductions in 1993