The Mississippi supercomputer project or what's a nice machine like you doing ina place like Mississippi?

摘要

The news that there is a supercomputer on the Oxford campus of the University of Mississippi is almost always met initially with disbelief and then with interest, envy, and sometimes with considerable relief that it is Ole Miss which is having to cope! The experiences of the Office of Computing and Information Systems at the University before, during, and after the installation of the supercomputer system may be of interest to other universities contemplating major changes. In March of 1987, the Computer Center was notified that the state of Mississippi was probably to be the recipient of a large gift from a major oil company. The gift consisted of a Control Data Corporation Cyber 205, a CDC frontend computer, and assorted peripherals and equipment, such as printers and air conditioning units. Six months after the final paperwork was signed, the computers were installed and were operational in a completely newly renovated building on a campus which had never been a CDC installation, having beenfirst a DEC 10 site and then an Amdahl 470 V/8 site.