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The '''C2''' was followed by the '''C3''' in 1991, being essentially similar to the C2 but with a faster clock and support for up to 8 CPUs. Various configurations of the C3 were offered, with between 50 to 240 MFLOPS per CPU. However, the C3 and the Convex business model were overtaken by changes in the computer industry. The arrival of RISC Microprocessors meant that it was no longer possible to develop cost-effective high performance computing as a standalone small low-volume company. While the C3 was delivered late, which resulted in lost sales, it was still not going to be able to compete with commodity high-performance computing in the long run.
Another speed boost was planned in the '''C4''', which moved the hardware implementation to [[GaAs]]-based chips, following an evolution identical to that of the Cray machines, but the effort was too little, too late. Some considered the whole C4 program to be nothing more than chasing a business in decline. By this time, even though Convex was the first vendor to ship a [[GaAs]] based product, they were losing money.
In 1994, Convex introduced an entirely new design, known as the '''Exemplar'''. Unlike the C-series '''vector computer''', the Exemplar was a parallel-computing machine based on off-the-shelf HP-PA [[RISC]] chips, connected together using [[Scalable Coherent Interconnect|SCI]]. First dubbed '''MPP''', these machines were later called '''SPP''' and '''Exemplar'''. The expectation was that a software programing model for parallel computing could draw in customers. But the type of customers Convex attracted believed in [[Fortran]] and brute force rather than sophisticated technology. The Operating System also had terrible performance problems which could not easily be fixed. Eventually, Convex established a working partnership with HP's hardware and software divisions. Initially it was intended that the Exemplar would be binary-compatible with HP's HPUX. But eventually it was decided to port HPUX to the platform and sell the platform as standalone servers.
In 1995, Hewlett-Packard bought Convex. HP sold Convex Exemplar machines under the '''S-Class''' (MP) and '''X-Class''' (CC-NUMA) titles, and later incorporated some of Exemplar's technology into the '''V-Class''' machine, which was released running the HPUX 11.0 release instead of the SPP-UX version which was sold with the S- and X-Class products.
==Culture==
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