Supertek Computers Inc. was a computer company founded in Santa Clara, California in 1985 by Mike Fung, an ex-Hewlett-Packard project manager, with the aim of designing and selling low-cost minisupercomputers compatible with those from Cray Research.[1]
Its first product was the Supertek S-1, a compact, air-cooled, CMOS clone of the Cray X-MP vector processor supercomputer running the CTSS (Cray Time Sharing System) operating system, and later a version of Unix. This was launched in 1989; although Supertek had raised US$21.4 million in venture capital, only $5 million of this was needed to develop the S-1.[1] Only ten units were sold before Supertek was acquired by Cray Research in 1990.[2] The S-1 was subsequently sold for a brief time by Cray as the Cray XMS.[3]
At the time of the acquisition the Supertek S-2, a clone of the Cray Y-MP, was under development. This was eventually launched as the Cray Y-MP EL in 1992.[4][5]
References
- Don Clark. Supertek's Minisupercomputer Clone San Francisco Chronicle, Chronicle Publishing Company, April 27, 1989^
- Lawrence M. Fisher. Cray in Deal To Acquire Supertek The New York Times, March 30, 1990^
- Dudght Davis. Cray Research Inc. Datamation, Reed Business Information, June 15, 1991^
- Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems Springer London, 2012^
- Cray Research EL-98 Rhode Island Computer Museum, 2020^