In November 1990, NCSA's CRAY Y-MP4/464 computer system went into service. By the time it is retired later this year, over 6,200 researchers and their students will have performed more than 100,000 hours of calculations on its four processors.
The machine's speedy floating point performance, coupled with copious memory and disk resources, allowed scientists to explore problems in astrophysics, chaos, chemistry, materials science, and other areas that were previously out of reach.
"The Cray Research Y-MP product line enabled more supercomputing science and engineering projects than any computer in history," NCSA Director Larry Smarr says.
A quick survey of a number of projects performed on NCSA's Cray Y-MP system follows: