International supercomputer applications symposium

Although English has become the de-facto universal scientific language, this does not imply that there are no language barriers within the scientific community. On the contrary, people from different disciplines who are using the same tool-a supercomputer-to solve their problems, have great difficulty explaining to each other what exactly they are doing. On the other hand it can be very enlightening to see scientists from other disciplines come across the same problems as you did as a supercomputer user and what kind of solutions they propose. All of this was apparent at the "International Supercomputer Applications Symposium" on November 7-9, 1984, held in Amsterdam and hosted by the Amsterdam Universities' Computer Center (SARA) and Control Data. The supercomputer discussed was the Cyber 205. In a few lectures also other supercomputers were briefly mentioned. The Cyber 205 has been with us since 1981. Some characteristics of this machine are: