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Vector machines pipeline data through the CPU
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They are not so popular/relevant as in the past as
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Improved C.P.U. architecture needs fewer cycles than before for each (complex) operation (e.g 4 now not ~100 as in past)
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8 Mhz 8087 of Cosmic Cube took 160 to 400 clock cycles to do a full floating point operation in 1983
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Applications need more flexible pipelines which allow different operations to be executed on consequitive operands as they stream through CPU
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Modern RISC processors (super scalar) can support such complex pipelines as they have far more logic than CPU's of the past
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In fact excellence of say, Cray C-90 is due to its very good memory architecture allowing one to get enough operands to sustain pipeline.
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Most workstation class machines have "good" CPU's but can never get enough data from memory to sustain good performance except for a few cache intensive applications
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