Seymour Cray: supercomputers Tong Lu COMP 1631 Winter 2011

Outline  Introduction  Early life  Engineering Research Associates  Control Data Corporation - CDC CDC CDC CDC CDC CDC CDC CDC 8600

Outline  Award and Cray Research Inc. - Cray-1 - Cray-1 - Cray-2 - Cray-2  Cray Computer Corporation - Cray-3 - Cray-3  Hobby  Conclusion  References

Introduction  Seymour R. Cray recognized as “the father of supercomputing” and credited with single-handedly creating and leading the high performance computer industry for decades.  Seymour R. Cray was a single minded computer engineer, regarded by some as a true maverick and “serial” pioneer.

Early life  Seymour Cray born September 28, 1925 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin  In high school the young Cray preferred to be in the electrical engineering laboratory as much as possible.  In 1943, he joined the US Army serving in an infantry communications platoon.  Seymour earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1950, followed by a Masters degree in Applied Mathematics in 1951.

Engineering Research Associates  Seymour Cray joined a new local company called Engineering Research Associates (ERA).  Housed in an old glider factory in St. Paul, Minnesota, ERA built specialized cryptographic equipment for the US Navy.  ERA was also here that Seymour Cray had the opportunity to design his first computer, the 1103.

Control Data Corporation - CDC 1604  Seymour’s passion for building scientific computers led him to help start Control Data Corporation (CDC) in  There Seymour met his goal of building the fastest of building the fastest scientific computer ever, scientific computer ever, resulting in the CDC 1604, resulting in the CDC 1604, the first fully-transistorized the first fully-transistorized commercial computer commercial computer (no more vacuum tubes). (no more vacuum tubes).

Control Data Corporation - CDC 6600 RRRRelease of the CDC considered the world’s first actual supercomputer, capable of nine Mflops (million floating- point operations per second) of processing power and cooled by Freon -- followed in 1963.

Control Data Corporation - CDC 7600  The CDC 7600 was next, running was next, running at 40 Mflops, at 40 Mflops, again the world’s again the world’s fastest fastest supercomputer. supercomputer.

Control Data Corporation - CDC 8600  In 1968 Seymour began work on the CDC 8600 on the CDC 8600 designed for greater designed for greater parallelism using four parallelism using four processors all sharing processors all sharing one memory. one memory.

Award and Cray Research Inc.  In 1968, Seymour was awarded the W.W. McDowell Award by the American Foundation of Information Processing Societies for his work in the computer field.  In 1972, Seymour founded Cray Research Inc. in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  In 1972, Seymour was also was presented with the Harry H. Good Memorial Award for his contributions to large-scale computer design and the development of multiprocessing systems.

Cray Research Inc. - Cray-1  The signature Cray-1 vector supercomputer vector supercomputer established a world established a world standard in supercomputing standard in supercomputing with its introduction in with its introduction in Integrated circuits Integrated circuits replaced transistors, and replaced transistors, and the Cray-1 delivered 170 the Cray-1 delivered 170 Mflops. Mflops.

Cray Research Inc. - Cray-2  In 1985, the Cray-2 computer system moved computer system moved supercomputing forward supercomputing forward yet again, breaking the yet again, breaking the gigaflop (one thousand gigaflop (one thousand Mflops) barrier. Mflops) barrier.

Cray Computer Corporation - Cray- 3  In 1989, Seymour left Cray Research to form Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Colorado.  On May 24, 1993, CCC delivered its first Cray-3 delivered its first Cray-3 supercomputer to NCAR. supercomputer to NCAR.

Hobby  Seymour enjoyed skiing, sailing, wind surfing, tennis, hiking and other sports.  Seymour loved challenges. One favorite pastime he had was digging tunnels for the sheer joy of digging tunnels.

Conclusion  In 1996 Seymour started SRC Computers, Inc. and started the design of his own massively parallel supercomputer, concentrating on the communications and memory performance.  On October 5, 1996 at the age of 71, Seymour Cray passed away in Colorado Springs, Colorado due to injuries suffered in an automobile accident that occurred two weeks earlier.

References SSSSeymour Cray – A Man Whose Vision Changed the World. n. d. BBBBreckenridge, Charles W. A Tribute to Seymour Cray. Web. 2 Feb PPPPepper, Jason. Seymour Cray. Web. 2 Feb