FACOM230-75 APU (1977)

• Computers
• Supercomputers

The APU is the part protruding from the right-hand housing.

Japan's first supercomputer, completed in 1977. It added an APU (Array Processing Unit) to the FACOM230-75 for processing array data. Both the FACOM230-75 and FACOM230-75 APU had structures with asymmetrical multi-processors. For programming applications, they were provided with AP-FORTRAN, a language based on standard FORTRAN specifications and could efficiently describe vector processing. The first unit put into use was shipped to the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan in August 1977. This was only 1 year after the release of the CRAY-1, a vector computer from the U.S. company CRAY.