Worldwide Statistics-1.51986-1992-1.5

In 1986 the vector computer technology was already proven and mature: vector computers were 10 years old, very sophisticated autovectorizing Fortran-compilers were available from both US vendors Cray Research and Control Data and the three Japanese vendors Fujitsu, NEC and Hitachi. Last but not least, a variety of Software packages, e.g. Nastran, Gaussian, PAM-crash, were on the market, making vector computers attractive not only to universities and research plants but also to the industry, especially to the automotive industry.

If we look at the market growth (Fig. 1.5) we see that the vector computer had an average of 15%annual growth, which is quite a bit above the growth of the DP-systems in general at the same time.

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The following list of figures shows the supercomputer distribution over the years 1986-1992 of the different countries (Fig. 1.6-1.12).

The recognizable major trends are:

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• Steady decrease of the portion of US-installations in contrast to increase of the Japanese portion. As mentioned before this was mainly due to the fact that a bigger number of relatively small entry level systems of Japanese vendors have been installed in Japan and that there was an early orientation of US researchers towards MPP systems. The TOP500 list (see chapter 2) demonstrates that the portions of both countries are almost the same in 1993 as in 1986 with the USA clearly dominating.

• The European portion kept rather stable over these 6 years with a little less than 25%. But inside Europe the decreasing portion of UK from 8%in 1986 down to 4%in 1992 is remarkable (and can be explained by the funding policy of the UK government, see chapter ) The portion of France slightly decreased from 8%to 6%, while the portion of Germany kept stable over the years with 7%. Other countries in Europe, e.g. Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark took over 5%of the worldwide supercomputer distribution.

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Looking at the distribution for the different vendors (Table 1.1 and Fig. 1.13-1.19) the dominating role of Cray Research in this market becomes immediately visible. In 1992 their market share had decreased only slightly from 63%in 1986 to 57%. This decrease contrasts with an increase of the market share of Fujitsu from 16%in 1986 to 27%in 1992, NEC from 1%to 8%and Hitachi from 4%to 8%. But we have to keep in mind the high portion of the entry level systems of these Japanese manufacturers as already mentioned before.

The major event however was the withdrawal of CDC/ETA from the market in 1989. The main impact of this was the relatively small overall growth of the market (Fig. 1.5) in 1990 and 1991. Many of the former CDC installations did not switch to one of the other big vector computer manufacturers like Cray Research. It seems to us, that in many cases they bought mini-supercomputers like Convex or Alliant.

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