A logic package of NEC Super Computer SX-2

In April 1983, NEC announced the supercomputer SX-2. The SX-2 was the first generation of vector supercomputer SX series and achieved 1.3GFLOPS (1.3 billion floating-point operations per second).

The SX-2 used ultra-high-speed LSI such as a logic element with a gate delay time of 250 ps and 1,000 gates per chip, and a memory element with an access time of 3.5 ns and 1 kbit per chip as semiconductor technology, and adopted the latest technology such as the first multi-chip LSI high-density package with water cooling system in Japan.

The vector architecture is suitable for efficient and high-speed processing of SIMD instructions that use a single instruction to describe repetitive operations written in DO loops. It has been used in a wide range of fields from the nuclear fusion and molecular science and weather forecasting, to the design of airplanes and automobiles.

【SX-2 specifications】

• Vector performance：1.3GFLOPS
  
• Number of processors：1
  
• Cache capacity：64KB
  
• Memory capacity：128/256MB
  
• Number of I/O units：1
  
• I/O performance：50MB/s
  
• Number of I/O channels：32(Max.)