Cydrome
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Founder | David Yen, Wei Yen, Ross Towle, Arun Kumar, Bob Rau |
| Defunct | 1988 |
| Headquarters | Milpitas, California , United States |
| Products | Numeric processor (Cydra-5) |
Cydrome operated as a Silicon Valley-based computer firm from 1984 until 1988. Established in San Jose by David Yen, Wei Yen, Ross Towle, Arun Kumar, and chief architect Bob Rau, the company specialized in creating a numeric processor utilizing a novel architectural approach.
History
Initially called "Axiom Systems," the enterprise sold the rights to its "SPARC" name (distinct from the architecture) to Sun Microsystems before adopting the name "Cydrome," a combination of "cyber" and "drome." In 1985, the company moved its operations to Milpitas, California, where it served as host for Bay Area ACM SIGBIG gatherings.
Toward the end of its existence, Cydrome secured funding from Prime Computers and arranged for Prime to OEM the Cydra-5 system. The two companies’ products were visually differentiated by casing colors: white for Cydrome and black for Prime. Although Prime intended to acquire Cydrome in 1988, it ultimately backed out, resulting in Cydrome’s shutdown after roughly four years of activity. Several of Cydrome’s technological innovations later contributed to the development of the Itanium architecture.
Product
The numeric processor developed by Cydrome employed a 256-bit very long instruction word (VLIW) design that enabled concurrent execution of multiple operations. Its custom Fortran compiler leveraged software pipelining techniques to enhance performance. The processor architecture consisted of seven instruction fields and supported sequential execution mode along with register rotation to improve loop pipelining efficiency.
The system featured virtual memory supported by a 64-way interleaved, four-port memory configuration using address hashing to distribute memory access evenly. Constructed with Emitter Coupled Logic (ECL) technology running at 25 MHz, key components utilized AMCC ECL ASICs.
An expansion included a front-end cluster of several 68020 processors operating Unix System V, which handled job scheduling for the numeric processor running a streamlined kernel. The company’s flagship model, the Cydra-5, saw nine units produced—three prototypes and six production models—and was unveiled at the 1987 Supercomputer Conference held in Santa Clara. One Cydra-5 system is preserved at the Computer History Museum.