-3 In Germany the vector computer activities started in 1980 with two Cray 1's installed at the MPI in Garching and at the DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen. The supercomputer community in the world was looking at Germany when in 1986 the Cray 2, the first one outside the USA, and one of the very first models (Nr. 6) of Seymour Cray's darling was installed in Baden-Württemberg at Stuttgart University. At the same time we started our Mannheim `Supercomputer Seminars' and `Supercomputer Statistics'.
Looking at the distribution over the different years (Table 1.2) a rising share of SAG/SNI from 14%in 1986 to 43%in 1992 in Germany is visible. Over the six years (Fig. 1.20) the overall growth was approximately the same in Germany as in the world. Only in 1988 Germany has had a tremendous growth of 31%, which was mainly caused by all the automotive manufacturers like Opel, Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW equipping themselves with Cray XMPs.
In 1992 the market share of Cray Research was 54%in Germany. Even though they are market leader, their general position in Europe (74%) was much better than in Germany. Without the SNI sold Fujitsu systems they totally dominate the European market (88 of 99 systems, i.e. 89%) as they also do in the USA (170 of 177 systems ± 96%). There are no European vector computer manufacturers and the Japanese play only a bigger role through their successful cooperation with SNI in Germany.