Series is placed above SX-4 Series which recognized for the excellent performance at low cost and its easy operation with a shared memory. Series succeeds SX-4 Series' features and is improved in the performance. In the maximum configuration, the performance is 4 teraflops and the main memory is 4 terabytes, that are four times higher performance and eight times larger memory than SX-4 Series respectably.
Series is the fastest available supercomputer for production use.
The monthly rental price for the new series starts from approximately 20 million yen per month, and first shipments are planned at the end of December, 1998. NEC is expecting to ship 120 systems including the current SX-4 Series worldwide over next three years. In 1988, NEC introduced SX-3 Series, the world's fastest supercomputer with operation speed exceeding 20 gigaflops. Series are highly evaluated for the high effective performance, the cost performance, low power, operational simplicity utilizing a shared memory and so on. 117 systems are ordered and 109 systems are shipped over the world as of May 31, 1998.