In August 1989, OSC engineers completed the installation of the $22 million Cray Y-MP8/864 system, which was deemed the largest and fastest supercomputer in the world for a short time. The seven-ton system was able to calculate 200 times faster than many mainframes at that time and underwent several weeks of stress testing from “friendly users, who loaded the machine to 97 percent capacity for 17 consecutive days.
“The lightning speed of the supercomputer allows scientists to work massive problems in real-time, without having to wait days or weeks for the results of larger computer runs,” according to a Sept. 28, 1989, article in Ohio State’s faculty and staff newsletter, OnCampus. “The CRAY Y-MP8/864 performs 2.7 billion calculations per second.”
