Editing Alliant Computer Systems (section)

===1990s===
In 1990, the FX/2800 series replaced the CE/ACEs and IPs with modules based on the [[Intel i860]] [[RISC]] chip. The i860 was an early [[superscalar]] CPU that allowed the programmer access directly into the [[instruction pipelining|pipelines]]; with custom coding the 860 was a very fast system, making it perfect for [[supercomputer]] applications. In the new series the Super Computational Element (SCE) and Super Interactive Processor (SIP) both consisted of up to four i860s, up to seven of which could be interconnected on the crossbar. A fully expanded FX/2800 could support 28 i860's in total.

Also in July 1988 Alliant purchased Raster Technologies,<ref name="ATC1991">{{cite book|author=Architecture Technology Corporation|title=Minisupercomputers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VbCjBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA61|date=September 1991|publisher=Elsevier Science|isbn=978-1-4832-9554-1|page=61|quote=In July, 1988, Alliant acquired Raster Technologies.}}</ref> a provider of high-resolution [[graphics]] terminals and custom [[graphics cards]] for [[Sun Microsystems]] workstations. Their GX4000 product was a combination of [[PHIGS|PHIGS+]] software and special graphical boards that could generate and display graphical vectors very fast. For 3D effects, a hardware Z-buffer was available. The Raster graphics technology was integrated with FX/40 and FX/80 machines to produce the VFX, Alliant's first fully integrated graphical [[minisupercomputer]].

Alliant's final product series was the CAMPUS/800, a massively parallel machine based on units similar to the FX/2800 known as ClusterNodes and sharing a total of up to 4GB of unified memory. Each ClusterNode was connected to up to 32 others with an intra-ClusterNode switch, with a latency of 1&nbsp;[[μs]] and 1.12&nbsp;GB/s bandwidth. An inter-ClusterNode switch based on [[HIPPI]] was also available, with a latency of 30&nbsp;μs and 2.56&nbsp;GB/s bandwidth. The largest CAMPUS system created included 192 ClusterNodes in total, and provided 4.7 GFLOPS.

The CAMPUS/800 was first announced in 1991, but the company was hit by a series of financial problems and went bankrupt in 1992. Various Alliant systems soldiered on in service for many years after that however, and were generally considered very reliable.

Alliant also contributed to the development of [[High Performance Fortran]].<ref name="KennedyKoelbel2007">{{cite conference|last1=Kennedy|first1=Ken|last2=Koelbel|first2=Charles|last3=Zima|first3=Hans|title=The rise and fall of High Performance Fortran|year=2007|pages=7-1–7-22|doi=10.1145/1238844.1238851|conference= HOPL III: 3rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages|isbn=978-1-59593-766-7
}}</ref>{{rp|7–9}}

The [[Computer History Museum]] has examples of the FX/8 and FX/1 (from [[Convex Computer Corporation]] after Alliant's fall), but is seeking examples of FX/80 and FX/2800 configurations.