CDC 6400
Encyclopedia
The CDC 6400, a member of the CDC 6000 series
, was a mainframe
computer
made by Control Data Corporation
in the 1960s. The central processing unit was architecturally compatible with the CDC 6600
. But in contrast to the 6600, which had 10 parallel functional units which could work on multiple instructions at the same time, the 6400 had a unified arithmetic unit, which could only work on a single instruction at a time. This resulted in a slower, lower-performance CPU, but one that cost significantly less. Memory, peripheral processor-based I/O, and peripherals were otherwise identical to the 6600.
The CDC 6500 was a dual CPU 6400. The CDC 6700 was also a dual CPU machine, but had one 6600 CPU and one 6400 CPU. The CDC 6415 was an even cheaper & slower machine; it had a 6400 CPU but with only 7 PPU's instead of the normal 10.
CDC 6000 series
The CDC 6000 series was a family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which all were extremely rapid and efficient for their time...
, was a mainframe
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
made by Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
in the 1960s. The central processing unit was architecturally compatible with the CDC 6600
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. It is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, outperforming its fastest predecessor, IBM 7030 Stretch, by about three times...
. But in contrast to the 6600, which had 10 parallel functional units which could work on multiple instructions at the same time, the 6400 had a unified arithmetic unit, which could only work on a single instruction at a time. This resulted in a slower, lower-performance CPU, but one that cost significantly less. Memory, peripheral processor-based I/O, and peripherals were otherwise identical to the 6600.
The CDC 6500 was a dual CPU 6400. The CDC 6700 was also a dual CPU machine, but had one 6600 CPU and one 6400 CPU. The CDC 6415 was an even cheaper & slower machine; it had a 6400 CPU but with only 7 PPU's instead of the normal 10.