A killer micro is a microprocessor

Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...

-based machine that infringes on mini

Minicomputer

A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...

, 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...

, or supercomputer

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...

 performance turf. It originally referred to the replacement of vector supercomputers built with bipolar technology by Massively Parallel Processors (MPP) assembled from a larger number of lower performing microprocessors. These systems faced initial skepticism, based on the assumption that applications do not have significant parallelism, because of Amdahl's law

Amdahl's law

Amdahl's law, also known as Amdahl's argument, is named after computer architect Gene Amdahl, and is used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved...

, but the success of early systems such as nCUBE

NCUBE

nCUBE was a series of parallel computing computers from the company of the same name. Early generations of the hardware used a custom microprocessor...

 and the fast progress in microprocessor performance following Moore's law

Moore's Law

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....

 led to a fast replacement.

Taken from the title of Eugene Brooks' (of Lawrence Livermore Labs) talk "Attack of the Killer Micros" at Supercomputing 1990. This title was probably chosen after the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a 1978 comedy film directed by John De Bello and starring David Miller. The film is a spoof of B movies. Made on a budget of less than US$100,000, the story involves tomatoes becoming sentient by unknown means and revolting against humanity. Writing credits were...

 cult film

Cult film

A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...

.

External links

• The Attack of the 'Killer Micros'