Bearing more resemblance to a modern art installation than a powerful supercomputer, the Cray X-MP/22 was the fastest computer in the world from 1983 to 1986. It ran at 105 MHz, then the quickest processing speed available, and was capable of performing 400 million calculations per second under optimal conditions. The circuits necessary to produce this processing power gave off so much heat that a conventional fan was insufficient for cooling; the circuit board had to be immersed in fluorocarbons in order to function properly. It was the first computer containing two processors that could be simultaneously accessed by a single program. Such superior technology wasn’t cheap—each Cray X-MP was built to order and cost tens of millions of dollars.
