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Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) was a U.S. electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who founded the company Cray Research. Image File history File links Seymour_cray. ...
September 28 is the 271st day of the year (272nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...
Chippewa Falls is a city located on the Chippewa River in Chippewa County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. ...
October 5 is the 278th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (279th in Leap years). ...
1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Nickname: The Springs Location in the state of Colorado Coordinates: County El Paso Mayor Lionel Rivera Area - City 482. ...
Image File history File links Flag_of_the_United_States. ...
Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with the application of mathematical knowledge to other domains. ...
Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...
Electrical Engineers design power systems… … and complex electronic circuits. ...
Control Data Corporation, or CDC, was one of the pioneering supercomputer firms. ...
Cray Computer Corporation was a spinoff of Cray Research intended to develop and market the Cray-3 supercomputer. ...
Cray-2 supercomputer Cray Inc. ...
Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. ...
SRC Computers, Inc. ...
Washington Avenue Bridge at night The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, almost always abbreviated U of M, and sometimes referred to as The U by locals, is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system. ...
A supercomputer is a computer that leads the world in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ...
September 28 is the 271st day of the year (272nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...
October 5 is the 278th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (279th in Leap years). ...
1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic - President George Walker Bush (R) - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from...
An engineers degree is an academic degree which is intermediate in rank between a masters degree and a doctorate; it is occasionally to be encountered in the United States in technical fields. ...
A supercomputer is a computer that leads the world in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ...
Cray-2 supercomputer Cray Inc. ...
Cray was born in 1925 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. His father was a civil engineer who fostered Cray's interest in science and engineering. As early as the age of ten he was able to build a device to convert punched paper tape into Morse code signals out of Erector Set components. The basement was given over to Cray as a "lab". Chippewa Falls is a city located on the Chippewa River in Chippewa County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. ...
The term civil engineer refers to an individual who practices civil engineering. ...
A roll of punched tape Punched tape is an old-fashioned form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data. ...
1922 Chart of the Morse Code Letters and Numerals Morse code is a method for transmitting information, using standardized sequences of short and long marks or pulses — commonly known as dots and dashes — for the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a message. ...
Erector Set is the trade name of a construction toy that was wildly popular in the United States during much of the 20th century. ...
Cray graduated from Chippewa Falls High School in 1943 before being drafted for World War II as a radio operator. He saw action in Europe, and then moved to the Pacific theatre where he worked on breaking Japanese codes. On his return to the United States he received a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1950. He also was awarded a M.Sc in applied mathematics in 1951. ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ...
Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Charles de Gaulle Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian...
World map showing Europe A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. ...
The Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) is the term used in the United States for all military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, in World War II. Pacific War is a more common name, around the world, for the broader conflict between the Allies and Japan...
Electrical Engineers design power systems… … and complex electronic circuits. ...
Washington Avenue Bridge at night The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, almost always abbreviated U of M, and sometimes referred to as The U by locals, is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
Control Data Corporation
In 1950, Cray joined Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. ERA had formed out of a former United States Navy lab that had built codebreaking machines, a tradition ERA carried on when such work was available. Cray quickly came to be regarded as an expert on digital computer technology, especially following his design work on the ERA 1103, the first commercially successful scientific computer. He remained at ERA when it was bought by Remington Rand and then Sperry Corporation in the early 1950s. At the newly formed Sperry-Rand, ERA became the "scientific computing" arm of their UNIVAC division. Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. ...
Location in Ramsey County and the state of Minnesota. ...
USN redirects here. ...
The UNIVAC 1103 or ERA 1103, a successor to the UNIVAC 1101, was a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in October, 1953. ...
A Remington Rand branded typewriter Remington Rand was an early American computer manufacturer, best known as the original maker of the UNIVAC I, and now part of Unisys. ...
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
But when the scientific computing division was phased out in 1957, a number of employees left to form Control Data Corporation (CDC). Cray wanted to follow immediately, but William Norris refused as Cray was in the midst of completing a project for the Navy, with whom Norris was interested in maintaining a good relationship. The project, the Naval Tactical Data System, was completed early the next year, at which point Cray left for CDC as well. By 1960 he had completed the design of the CDC 1604, an improved low-cost ERA 1103 that had impressive performance for its price range. Control Data Corporation, or CDC, was one of the pioneering supercomputer firms. ...
William Norris (b. ...
NTDS training in a mock-up of a shipboard CIC Naval Tactical Data System, commonly NTDS, refers to a computerized information processing system developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s and first deployed in the early 1960s for use in combat ships. ...
CDC 1604 a 48-bit transistorized version of Control Data Corporations 1103 model first built in 1959. ...
The UNIVAC 1103 or ERA 1103, a successor to the UNIVAC 1101, was a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in October, 1953. ...
Even as the CDC 1604 was starting to ship to customers in 1960, Cray had already moved on to designing its "replacement", the CDC 6600. Although in terms of hardware the 6600 was not on the leading edge, Cray invested considerable effort into the design of the machine in an attempt to enable it to run as fast as possible. Unlike most high-end projects, Cray realized that there was considerably more to performance than simple processor speed, that I/O bandwidth had to be maximized as well in order to avoid "starving" the processor of data to crunch. As he later noted, Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system. CDC 1604 a 48-bit transistorized version of Control Data Corporations 1103 model first built in 1959. ...
The CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first manufactured in 1965. ...
For the economic use of the term, see Input-output model. ...
The 6600 was the first commercial supercomputer, outperforming everything then available by a wide margin. While expensive, for those that needed the absolutely fastest computer available there was nothing else on the market. When other companies (namely IBM) attempted to create machines with similar performance, he increased the challenge by releasing the 5-fold faster CDC 7600. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ...
The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray-designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Datas dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. ...
The Chippewa Lab During this period Cray had become increasingly annoyed at what he saw as interference from CDC management. Cray always demanded an absolutely quiet work environment with a minimum of management overhead, but as the company grew he found himself constantly interrupted by middle-managers who (according to Cray) did little but gawk and use him as a sales tool by introducing him to prospective customers.
Cray decided that in order to continue development he would have to move from St. Paul, far enough that it would be too long a drive for a "quick visit" and long distance telephone charges would be just enough to deter most calls, yet close enough that real visits of board meetings could be attended without too much difficulty. After some debate, Norris backed him and set up a new lab on land Cray owned in his hometown of Chippewa Falls. Some of the reason for the move may also have to vjfbvevuievinedo with Cray's worries about an impending nuclear war, which he felt made Minneapolis a serious safety concern. His house, built a few hundred yards from the new CDC lab, included a huge bomb shelter. Nuclear War is a card game designed by Douglas Malewicki, and originally published in 1966. ...
A bunker is a defensive warfare fortification to protect oneself. ...
The new Chippewa Lab was set up in the middle of the 7600 project, although it does not seem to have delayed the project. After the 7600 shipped, he started development of its replacement, the CDC 8600. It was this project that finally ended his run of successes at CDC in 1972. The CDC 8600 was the last of Seymore Crays supercomputer designs while working for Control Data. ...
Although the 6600 and 7600 had been huge successes in the end, both projects had almost bankrupted the company while they were being designed. The 8600 was running into similar difficulties and Cray eventually decided that the only solution was to start over fresh. This time Norris wasn't willing to take the risk, and another project within the company, the CDC STAR-100 seemed to be progressing. Norris said he was willing to keep the project alive at a low level until the STAR was delivered, at which point full funding could be put into the 8600. Cray was unwilling to work under these conditions and left the company. The STAR-100 was a supercomputer from Control Data Corporation, one of the first machines to use a vector processor for improved math performance. ...
Cray Research The split was fairly amicable, and when he started Cray Research in a new lab on the same Chippewa property a year later, Norris invested $300,000 in start-up money. Like CDC's organization, Cray R&D was based in Chippewa Falls and business headquarters were in Minneapolis. Unlike CDC, Cray's manufacturing was also in Chippewa Falls. Cray-2 supercomputer Cray Inc. ...
At first there was some question as to what exactly the new company should do. It did not seem that there would be any way for them to afford to develop a new computer, given that the now-large CDC had been unable to support more than one. But when the President in charge of financing traveled to Wall Street to look for seed capital, he was surprised to find that Cray's reputation was very well known. Far from struggling for some role to play in the market, the financial world was more than willing to provide Cray with all the money they would need to develop a new machine. Elaborate marble facade of NYSE as seen from Broad and Wall Streets For other uses, see Wall Street (disambiguation). ...
Seed money is money invested in a company to begin new projects, which it initially was not capable of creating. ...
After several years of development their first product was released in 1976 as the Cray-1. As with earlier Cray designs, the Cray-1 made sure that the entire computer was fast, as opposed to just the processor. When it was released it easily beat almost every machine in terms of speed, including the STAR-100 that had beaten the 8600 for funding. The only machine able to perform on the same sort of level was the ILLIAC IV, a specialized one-off machine that rarely operated near its maximum performance except on very specific tasks. In general, the Cray-1 beat anything on the market by a wide margin. CRAY-1 at the EPFL in Switzerland. ...
The ILLIAC IV was one of the most infamous supercomputers ever, destined to be the last in a series of research machines from the University of Illinois. ...
Serial number 001 was "lent" to Los Alamos in 1976, and that summer the first full system was sold to the National Center for Atmospheric Research for $8.8 million. The company's early estimates had suggested that they might sell a dozen such machines, based on sales of similar machines from the CDC era, but in the end well over 100 Cray-1's were sold, and the company was a huge success. Los Alamos National Laboratory, aerial view from 1995. ...
NCAR, Boulder, Colorado National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a U.S.-based institute whose stated mission is: NCARs flagship Mesa Laboratory is located in the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, in a dramatic complex of buildings designed by architect I.M. Pei. ...
Follow-up success was not so easy. While he worked on the Cray-2, other teams delivered the four-processor Cray X-MP, which was a huge success. When the Cray-2 was finally released after six years of development it was only marginally faster than the X-MP, largely due to very fast memory, and thus sold in much smaller numbers. As the Cray-3 project started he found himself once again being "bothered" too much with day-to-day tasks. In order to concentrate on design, Cray left the CEO position of Cray Research in 1980 to become an independent contractor, working from a new lab in Colorado Springs, Colorado, near the site of NCAR and the earlier attempted Cray Laboratories. The Cray-2 is in the left foreground. ...
The Cray X-MP was a supercomputer designed, built and sold by Cray Research. ...
The Cray-3 was intended to be Cray Researchs successor to the Cray-2 supercomputer. ...
Nickname: The Springs Location in the state of Colorado Coordinates: County El Paso Mayor Lionel Rivera Area - City 482. ...
According to Jim Gray (quoted by C. Gordon Bell in his "Seymour Cray Perspective" [1]), when asked what kind of CAD tools he used for the Cray-1, Cray said that he liked #3 pencils with quadrille pads. Cray recommended using the backs of the pages so that the lines were not so dominant. When he was told that Apple Computer had just bought a Cray to help design the next Apple Macintosh, Cray commented that he had just bought a Macintosh to design the next Cray. Jim Gray may refer to: James N. Gray, computer scientist James P. Gray, judge and Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
This article is about Gordon Bell, the computer engineer. ...
Apple Inc. ...
The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...
In 1989 Cray was faced with a repeat of history when the Cray-3 started to run into difficulties. An upgrade of the X-MP using high-speed memory from the Cray-2 was under development and seemed to be making real progress, and once again management was faced with two projects and limited budgets. They eventually decided to take the safer route, releasing the new design as the Cray Y-MP. The Cray Y-MP was a supercomputer sold by Cray Research from 1988, and the successor to the companys X-MP. The Y-MP retained software compatibility with the X-MP, but extended the address registers from 24 to 32 bits. ...
Cray Computer Corporation Cray decided to spin off the Colorado Springs lab to form Cray Computer Corporation, taking the Cray-3 project with them.
The 500 MHz Cray-3 was to prove Cray's second major failure. In order to provide the tenfold increase in performance that he always demanded of his newest machines, Cray decided that the machine would have to be built using gallium arsenide semiconductors. In the past Cray had always avoided using anything even near the state of the art, preferring to use well-known solutions and designing a fast machine based on them. But in this case Cray was developing every part of the machine, even the chips inside it. This article is about the chemical compound. ...
The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time. ...
Nevertheless the team was able to get the machine working and installed their first example at NCAR. The machine was still essentially a prototype, and the company was using the installation to debug the design. By this time a number of massively parallel machines were coming into the market at price/performance points the Cray-3 could not touch. Cray responded through "brute force", starting design of the Cray-4 which would run at 1 GHz and outpower these machines, regardless of price. Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life science, medical diagnositcs, and other fields. ...
The Cray-4 was intended to be Cray Computers successor to the failed Cray-3 and earlier Cray-2 supercomputers. ...
In 1995 there had been no further sales of the Cray-3, and the ending of the cold war made it unlikely anyone would buy enough Cray-4's to offer a return on the development funds. The company ran out of money and had to file for bankruptcy. For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
SRC Computers Cray had always resisted the massively parallel solution to high-speed computing, offering a variety of reasons that it would never work as well as one very fast processor. He famously quipped If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?. By the mid-1990s this line was becoming increasingly difficult to justify, and modern compiler technology made developing programs on such machines not much more difficult than their simpler counterparts[citation needed]. Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life science, medical diagnositcs, and other fields. ...
This article is about the computing term. ...
Cray set up a new company, SRC Computers, and started the design of his own massively parallel machine. The new design concentrated on communications and memory performance, the bottleneck that hampered many parallel designs. Design had just started when Cray suddenly died as a result of a car accident. SRC Computers, Inc. ...
In 1996 Silicon Graphics bought Cray Research, and eventually the division was merged with Tera Computer Company to form Cray Inc. Silicon Graphics, Inc. ...
Tera Computer Company Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, by James Rottsolk and Burton Smith. ...
Cray Inc. ...
Personal life Beyond the design of computers Cray led a "streamlined life". He avoided publicity and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work. He enjoyed skiing, wind surfing, tennis and other sports. Another favourite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he once attributed the secret to his success to elves that talked to him there. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem." [2] Deep powder skiing Alpine skier carving a turn on piste Members of the U.S. Air Force skiing (and snowboarding) at Keystone Resorts 14th Annual SnoFest This article is about snow skiing. ...
Windsurfing in Essex, England Windsurfing (also called boardsailing) is a sport involving travel over water on a small 2-4. ...
A tennis net Tennis is a game played between either two players (singles) or two teams of two players (doubles). Players use a stringed racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponents court. ...
For alternate meanings, see Lightning (disambiguation). ...
Cray died October 5, 1996 (age 71) of head and neck injuries suffered in a traffic collision on September 22, 1996. Cray had been hospitalized two weeks since his SUV was struck in a multicar rollover accident on Interstate 25 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Interestingly, his Jeep Cherokee vehicle was designed using a Cray supercomputer. [3] October 5 is the 278th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (279th in Leap years). ...
1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
September 22 is the 265th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (266th in leap years). ...
1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
A fourth-generation (2006-) Ford Explorer, the best-selling mid-size SUV in the United States A sport utility vehicle, or SUV, is a passenger vehicle which combines the towing capability of a pickup truck with the passenger-carrying space of a sedan. ...
Interstate 25 is an interstate highway in the western United States. ...
Nickname: The Springs Location in the state of Colorado Coordinates: County El Paso Mayor Lionel Rivera Area - City 482. ...
The Jeep Cherokee is a name for three different SUV models produced from 1974 to the present: 1974–1983 Jeep Cherokee (SJ) full-size SUV 1984–2001 Jeep Cherokee (XJ) compact SUV 1993–present Jeep Grand Cherokee mid-size SUV 2002–present european version of Jeep Liberty mid-size SUV...
References - Charles J. Murray (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-04885-2.
- Charles Babbage Institute
The Charles Babbage Institute (also titled the Center for the History of Information Technology) is a research center specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the post-World War II history of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking. ...
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