Convex Computer: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:10, 29 July 2004

Revision as of 00:41, 25 August 2004

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'''Convex Computer''' was a [[computer]] company that produced a number of "minisupercomputers"[[minisupercomputer]]s, [[supercomputer]]s for small to medium-sized businesses. Their later '''Exemplar''' series of [[parallel computing]] machines was based on the [[Hewlett-Packard]] [[PA-RISC]] CPU series, and in 1995 HP bought the company. Exemplar machines were offered for sale by HP for some time.

Convex was formed in [[1982]] by Bob Paluck and Steve Wallach in [[Richardson, Texas]]. Their product concept was not particularly original: they planned on producing a machine very similar in architecture to the [[Cray Research]] [[vector processor]] machines, but with a somewhat lower performance, and at a much lower price-performance point. In order to lower costs, the Convex designs were not as technologically aggressive as Cray's, and were based on more mainstream chip technology, attempting to make up for the loss in performance in other ways.