ETA10

The ETA10 was a line of vector supercomputers designed, manufactured, and marketed by ETA Systems, a spin-off division of Control Data Corporation (CDC). The ETA10 was announced in 1986, with the first deliveries made in early 1987. The system was an evolution of the CDC Cyber 205, which can trace its origins back to the CDC STAR-100.

By 1990, ETA Systems was reincorporated into CDC and production discontinued, and many of the users, such as Florida State University, negotiated Cray hardware in exchange.

Historical development

CDC had a strong history of creating powerful mainframe computers, with an emphasis on the scientific computing customer base. One of the most famous computer architects to emerge from CDC was Seymour Cray. While he went on to form his own company, Cray Research, work continued at CDC in developing high-end mainframe computers (supercomputers)—led by another famous architect, Neil Lincoln. As Cray competed against CDC, it became apparent to top management that it needed to decrease the development time for the next generation computer—thus a new approach was considered for the follow-on to the Cyber 205.