CRAY ELs (echo, monarch, alpine, st-elmo):
1994–1997
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Dwarfed by Y-MP giants and tall, massively parallel machines in the NCAR computer room, four modest CRAY ELs joined the SCD hardware lineup in 1994. An EL92 called echo arrived in May, two EL98s (monarch and alpine) came in July, and a third EL98, st-elmo, was delivered on August 1. The EL92, which Cray Research called a "deskside computer," stood about waist high. The EL98s were slightly larger, but still measured less than five feet tall.
The CRAY ELs were entry-level supercomputers that offered full compatibility with high-end Crays as well as good price/performance, reliability, and connectivity to the Mass Storage System. The systems were well suited for software development and large-memory jobs. By way of comparison, an EL processor was about one-fourth as fast as a processor on the CRAY Y-MP8/864 (shavano).
The smallest EL, echo, had two CPUs, 64 megawords of memory, and 20.9 gigabytes of disk. The two mid-sized ELs, monarch and st-elmo, had eight CPUs, 128 megawords of memory, and 46.4 gigabytes of disk. The largest EL, alpine, had eight CPUs, 256 megawords of memory (four times the size of shavano's memory, and 46.4 gigabytes of disk.
The CRAY ELs were binary compatible with the Y-MP, ran the UNICOS operating system, and offered nearly all the same software (including CF77, CF90, and C).
The CRAY ELs were clustered to provide higher machine utilization and simplified usage and maintenance.
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One-third of the EL Cluster's computing resources were allocated to the general user community. The remaining two-thirds of the EL Cluster's computing resources were allocated to Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL) projects.
Alpine and monarch were decommissioned on September 11, 1995. Echo was decommissioned on June 9, 1997, and st-elmo was decommissioned on June 30, 1997.