Word: cray
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...nearly two decades, the name Cray Research has been synonymous with supercomputers, those lightning-fast machines used for everything from locating oil deposits to designing nuclear warheads. Not only had Cray seized nearly two-thirds of the world market for number crunchers in the $5 million- to-$25 million range, but it held exclusive license to sell any machine made by Seymour Cray, who is to supercomputers what Alexander Graham Bell was to the telephone...
...Cray and the company he founded have decided to go their separate ways. In an unexpected move, the firm announced last week that it was splitting into two rival entities: Cray Research, based in Minneapolis, and Cray Computer, based in Colorado Springs and headed by Seymour Cray. The new company, financed with $150 million in cash and equipment from its parent firm, will devote itself to developing the long-awaited Cray-3, a computer that will compete head on with the next generation of supermachines produced by Cray Research. "It's a stunning development," says Gary Smaby, an analyst with...
...dramatic breakup was the latest of several surprises that rocked the intensely competitive industry this spring. In April NEC, one of Japan's three supercomputer makers, announced a machine it claims is eight times faster than the speediest Cray. A week later Cray's crosstown rival Control Data declared that after five years and $238 million in losses, it was closing its supercomputer subsidiary, ETA Systems. That left Cray as the last U.S. company still racing the Japanese for pre-eminence in what both countries view as a technology critical to the future of science and industry...
...this made the U.S. supercomputer effort even more dependent on one man: Seymour Cray. At 63, Cray is one of the most enigmatic figures in computer science. A restless, rugged individualist of legendary idiosyncrasy (for many years he made a point of building a new sailboat every winter and, inexplicably, burning it in the fall), he has devoted his professional life, first at Control Data and later with his own firm, to building the world's most powerful computers. His track record: an unequaled series of five major computer designs dating back to 1960, each for what would...
...Cray-3 was to be his most impressive to date. People who have seen prototypes describe it as a technological tour de force. To minimize the distance electrons have to move within its components, Cray is squeezing chips capable of 16 billion calculations per second into a tight octagonal package 32 in. across, the size of a small coffee table. The computer's basic building blocks are 4-in. by 4-in. modules each bejeweled with 1,024 chips and threaded with more than a million interconnects of braided gold wire thinner than a hair...