Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the NCR Corporation (NCR), General Electric, and Honeywell, RCA and UNIVAC. For most of the 1960s, the strength of CDC was the work of the electrical engineer Seymour Cray who developed a series of fast computers, then considered the fastest computing machines in the world; in the 1970s, Cray left the Control Data Corporation and founded Cray Research (CRI) to design and make supercomputers. In 1988, after much financial loss, the Control Data Corporation began withdrawing from making computers and sold the affiliated companies of CDC; in 1992, Cray established Control Data Systems, Inc. The remaining affiliate companies of CDC currently do business as the software company Ceridian.
The 12-bit CDC 160 and 160-A architecture were the basis of the peripheral processors (PPs) in the CDC 6000 series.
CDC 6500 with open panels. On display at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington.
CDC 6600
CDC 7600, serial no. 1
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing. A mainframe computer is large but not as large as a supercomputer and has more processing power than some other classes of computers, such as minicomputers, servers, workstations, and personal computers. Most large-scale computer-system architectures were established in the 1960s, but they continue to evolve. Mainframe computers are often used as servers.
A single-frame IBM z15 mainframe. Larger capacity models can have up to four total frames. This model has blue accents, as compared with the LinuxONE III model with orange highlights.
A pair of IBM mainframes. On the left is the IBM z Systems z13. On the right is the IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper.
An IBM System z9 mainframe
Inside an IBM System z9 mainframe