Display on the first floor of the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science of the shared memory Cedar (1985-1996) computer system, which included four hardware multiprocessor clusters, as well as parallel system and applications software.
Pictured: global memory board
Over its nine years of major funding, plus follow-on work by many of its participants, the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development (CSRD) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign pioneered many of the shared memory architectural and software technologies upon which all 21st-century computation is based. Beginning in 1984, CSRD built the shared memory Cedar computer system, which included four hardware multiprocessor clusters, as well as parallel system and applications software.
Illinois Computer Science professors emeritus David Padua and David Kuck have written a detailed history of the University of Illinois Center for Supercomputing Research and Development published on Wikipedia. Please take a look at the extensive article and celebrate the contributions of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty, students, and administration to advancing large-scale computing science and engineering that we all benefit from today.