Word: cray
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that could do the job. But Smarr soon realized that most of the hundred or so supercomputers powerful enough to serve his needs were either in the hands of private industry or tied up doing work for the Department of Defense. He finally had to use an American-made Cray 1 at West Germany's Max Planck Institut. "The Germans were extremely gracious," he says. "But it was somewhat ironic...
...computer development may have moved from strategic blueprints on the desks of high-tech executives to a nationwide trend mapped in stone. A sixty-nine digit number--the last in a century-old list of seemingly unfactorable numbers composed by a famous French mathematician--was broken down by a Cray supercomputer. The implications of this are revolutionary. While the breakdown of the number, more simply known as 2251-1, utilized only a sleek algorithm and no revolutionary advances, it signaled the ever-growing importance of ultra-sophisticated computers...
...finish the task. Then, in the fall of 1982, a chance encounter closed the gap. During a scientific conference in Winnipeg, Canada, Gustavus Simmons, head of Sandia's applied-math department, was mulling the factoring problem over a few beers with another mathematician and an engineer from Cray Research, makers of the world's fastest computer. The engineer, Tony Warnock, pointed out that the internal workings of the Cray were especially suited to factoring, which is essentially done by a process of trial and error...
Unlike ordinary computers, the Cray can sample whole clusters of numbers simultaneously, like a sieve sifting through sand for coins. At Sandia, Simmons joined with his colleagues Mathematicians James Davis and Diane Holdridge to teach their own Cray how to factor. That involved developing an algorithm, or set of algebraic instructions, that would break the problem down into small steps. They succeeded admirably. In rapid succession they factored numbers of 58, 60, 63 and 67 digits. At this point, however, even the power of their Cray seemed to have reached its limit. But the Sandia team made one more...
Unterberg likes to sign up a company well before it goes public in the hope that he can continue to underwrite subsequent stock offerings as it gets bigger. When Cray Research, a Minneapolis-based maker of scientific computers, went public in 1976, Rothschild earned a fee of $150,000 on the $9.9 million issue. Cray has since sold an additional $63 million worth of stock through Rothschild-led syndicates and generated $500,000 in additional fees for Unterberg's firm...