A description is given of a balanced and functionality complete minisupercomputer called the Cydra 5 Departmental Supercomputer. The Cydra 5 makes extensive use of industry standards, such as AT&T Unix System V.3, ANSI Fortran 77, and the IEEE 754 floating-point standard, to take advantage of customers' investments in applications software. The open architecture of the Cydra 5, including the use of the VME bus, makes it an attractive platform for system integrators. It offers the following features: Directed Dataflow (Cydrome proprietary architecture), compiler optimizing technology, high-speed memory with guaranteed bandwidth, tightly integrated multiple optimized processors, parallel processing, and a parallelized Unix-compatible operating system.