Talk:CDC STAR-100

Lacks software

The LIBs are nice, but this page needs more on software details (the way the page reads (hardware and performance) was in large part part of the downfall of the firm). 171.66.94.187 (talk) 22:19, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Miscellaneous issues

The article states In general organization, the STAR was similar to CDC's earlier supercomputers, where a simple CPU was supported by a number of peripheral processors that offloaded housekeeping tasks and allowed the CPU to crunch numbers as quickly as possible. In the STAR, both the CPU and peripheral processors were deliberately further simplified, to lower the cost and complexity of implementation. However, the STAR-100 had a much more sophisticated instruction set, had 256 general registers instead of 8 each of A, B and X, had virtual memory, used two's complement arithmetic and had no peripheral processors; that doesn't seem either similar or simpler.

There were buffer processors attached to peripheral equipment, but their role was very different from that of peripheral processors. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:53, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

First to use integrated circuits

Articles says that CDC STAR-100 was first. But I think CDC 7600 (when Cray was still in CDC in his research division) was the first. 85.195.241.226 (talk) 01:31, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

No, the 7600 was built of individual components on PCBs. The 8600 was to be the first IC-based machine, but never worked. The ILLIAC IV used ICs, but was so delayed it ended up post-dating the STAR. There may be some other design that pre-dates it, but it's none of the "common" ones. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:20, 24 June 2025 (UTC)