vector operation would involve loading a small set of data into the vector registers and then running several operations on it, the vector system of the new design had its own separate pipeline. For instance, the multiplication and addition units were implemented as separate hardware, so the results of one could be internally pipelined into the next, the instruction decode having already been handled in the machine's main pipeline. Cray referred to this concept as chaining, as it allowed programmers to "chain together" several instructions and extract higher performance. Description The new machine was the first Cray design to use integrated circuits (ICs). Although ICs had been available since the 1960s, it was only in the early 1970s that they reached the performance necessary for high-speed applications. The Cray-1 used only four different IC types, an ECL dual 5-4 NOR gate (one 5-input, and one 4-input, each with differential output), another slower MECL 10K 5-4 NOR gate used for address fanout, a 16×4-bit high speed (6 ns) static RAM (SRAM) used for registers and a 1,024×1-bit 48 ns SRAM used for the main memory. These integrated circuits were supplied by Fairchild Semiconductor and Motorola. In all, the Cray-1 contained about 200,000 gates. ICs were mounted on large five-layer printed circuit boards, with up to 144 ICs per board. Boards were then mounted back to back for cooling (see below) and placed in twenty-four racks containing 72 double-boards. The typical module (distinct processing unit) required one or two boards. In all the machine contained 1,662 modules in 113 varieties. Each cable between the modules was a twisted pair, cut to a specific length in order to guarantee the signals arrived at precisely the right time and minimize electrical reflection. Each signal produced by the ECL circuitry was a differential pair, so the signals were balanced. This tended to make the demand on the power supply more constant and reduce switching noise. The load on the power supply was so evenly balanced that Cray boasted that the power supply was unregulated. To the power supply, the entire computer system looked like a simple resistor. The high-performance ECL circuitry generated considerable heat, and Cray's designers spent as much effort on the design of the refrigeration system as they did on the rest of the mechanical design. In this case, each circuit board was paired with a second, placed back to back with a