Cray Inc.
Type	Public (NASDAQ: CRAY)
Founded	1972 as Cray Research, Inc. A public company usually refers to a company that is permitted to offer its registered securities ( Stock, bonds, etc The NASDAQ (acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American Stock exchange.
Founder	Seymour Cray
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington
Products	Supercomputers
Website	cray.com

Cray Inc. An entrepreneur is a person who has possession over a company enterprise, or Venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome Seymour Roger Cray ( September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) was a U In Marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a Market that might satisfy a want or need A supercomputer is a Computer that is at the frontline of processing capacity particularly speed of calculation (at the time of its introduction A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages (NASDAQ: CRAY) is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The NASDAQ (acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American Stock exchange. A supercomputer is a Computer that is at the frontline of processing capacity particularly speed of calculation (at the time of its introduction The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Roger Cray ( September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) was a U Already a legend in his field by this time, Cray put his company on the map in 1976 with the release of the Cray-1 vector computer. The Cray-1 was a Supercomputer designed by a team including Seymour Cray for Cray Research. A vector processor, or array processor, is a CPU design where the instruction set includes operations that can perform mathematical operations on multiple data Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995, while Cray Research was bought by SGI the next year. Silicon Graphics Inc (commonly initialised to SGI, historically sometimes referred to as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) is a company Cray Inc. was formed in 2000 when Tera Computer Company purchased the Cray Research Inc. Tera Computer Company was a manufacturer of High-performance computing software and hardware, founded in 1987 in Seattle Washington by business from SGI and adopted the name of its acquisition.

Contents 1 Company history 1.1 ERA, CDC and Cray Research: 1950 to 1996 1.2 Silicon Graphics: 1996 to 2000 1.3 Cray Inc.: 2000 to present 2 References 3 External links

Company history

ERA, CDC and Cray Research: 1950 to 1996

Seymour Cray began working in the computing field in 1950 when he joined Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s Saint Paul ( abbreviated St Paul) is the capital and second most populous city in the U There, he helped to create the ERA 1103, regarded as the first successful scientific computer. 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 ERA eventually became part of UNIVAC, and started to be phased out. UNIVAC serves as the catch-all name for the American manufacturers of the lines of mainframe computers by that name which through mergers and acquisitions underwent He left the company in 1960, a few years after some former ERA employees set up Control Data Corporation (CDC). Control Data Corporation (CDC, was one of the pioneering Supercomputer firms He eventually set up a lab at his home in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, about 85 miles to the east. Geography Chippewa Falls is located at (44934110 -91393228 According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 11

Cray had a string of successes at CDC, including the CDC 6600 and CDC 7600. The CDC 6600 was a Mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray -designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data 's dominance of the Supercomputer field into the However the company ran into financial difficulties in the late 1960s and development funds for his follow-on CDC 8600 became scarce. The CDC 8600 was the last of Seymour Cray 's Supercomputer designs while working for Control Data. When he was told the project would have to be put "on hold" in 1972, Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research Inc. , with research and development facilities in Chippewa Falls and the business headquarters in Minneapolis.

The Cray-1 was a major success when it was released, faster than all computers at the time except for the ILLIAC IV. The Cray-1 was a Supercomputer designed by a team including Seymour Cray for Cray Research. ILLIAC IV was one of the most infamous Supercomputers ever in a series of research machines ILLIACs, from the University of Illinois. The first system was sold within a month for US$8. The United States dollar ( sign: $; code: USD) is the unit of Currency of the United States; it has also been 8 million. Seymour Cray continued working, this time on the Cray-2, though it only ended up being marginally faster than the Cray X-MP, developed by another team at the company. The Cray-2 was a vector Supercomputer made by Cray Research starting in 1985. The Cray X-MP was a Supercomputer designed built and sold by Cray Research.

He soon left the CEO position to become an independent contractor. A chief executive officer ( CEO) or chief executive is typically the highest-ranking corporate officer ( executive) or administrator Cray started a new VLSI technology lab for the Cray-2 in Boulder, Colorado, Cray Laboratories, in 1979. In Geology, a boulder is a rock with grain size of usually no less than 256 mm (10 Inches diameter The State of Colorado ( or chiefly by nonresidents) is a state located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. The Labs were closed in 1982, but Cray later headed a similar spin-off in 1989, forming Cray Computer Corporation (CCC) in Colorado Springs. The City of Colorado Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the County seat and most populous city of El Paso County, Colorado, Seymour Cray worked there on the Cray-3 project, the first attempt at major use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors in computing. The Cray-3 was a Supercomputer intended to be Cray Research 's successor to the Cray-2. Gallium arsenide ( GaAs) is a compound of two elements Gallium and Arsenic. A semiconductor' is a Solid material that has Electrical conductivity in between a conductor and an insulator; it can vary over that However, the changing political climate (collapse of Warsaw Pact and the end of Cold War) resulted in poor sales (only one Cray-3 was delivered), and the company fell by the wayside, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 1995. The Warsaw Pact (see Nomenclature) was an organization of Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the Bankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their Creditors Creditors may file a bankruptcy petition against CCC's remains then began Cray's final corporation SRC Computers, Inc. which still exists. SRC Computers Inc is a privately owned company established in 1996 in Colorado Springs Colorado by Seymour Cray, shortly before his death on October

Cray Research, with Steve Chen, continued with the line originally started with the X-MP, adding the Cray Y-MP and then Cray C90 and Cray T90, developments of that series. Steve Chen may refer to Steve Chen (computer engineer, designer of the Cray X-MP computer Steve Chen (YouTube Steve The Cray Y-MP was a Supercomputer sold by Cray Research from 1988, and the successor to the company's X-MP. The Cray C90 series (initially named the Y-MP C90) was a Vector processor Supercomputer launched by Cray Research in 1991 The Cray T90 series (code-named Triton during development was the last of a line of Vector processing Supercomputers manufactured by Cray Research All of these machines essentially comprised multiple Cray-1's in a box, two to four in the X-MP, up to thirty-two in the later machines. Because of the uncertainty of the Cray-2 project, a number of Cray-object-code compatible "Crayette" firms started: Scientific Computer Systems (SCS), American Supercomputer, Supertek, and perhaps at least one other firm. Supertek Computers Inc was a computer company founded in Santa Clara California in 1985 by Mike Fung an ex- Hewlett-Packard Project manager, with the Not meant to compete against Cray, these firms attempted less expensive, slower CMOS versions of the X-MP with the release of the COS operating system (SCS) and the CFT Fortran compiler. Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to All these firms also considered National labs (LANL/LLNL) developed CTSS operating system as well before caving in to the tide of Unixes. The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers are a system of facilities and laboratories overseen by the United States Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( LLNL) in Livermore California is a scientific research laboratory founded by the University of California in 1952 Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer

In the late 1980s the high-performance market began to be overtaken by a series of massively parallel computers, led by pioneers Thinking Machines, Kendall Square Research, nCUBE, MasPar and Meiko Scientific. Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science life science medical diagnostics and other fields Thinking Machines Corporation was a Supercomputer manufacturer founded in Waltham Massachusetts in 1982 by W Kendall Square Research (KSR was a Supercomputer company headquartered originally in Kendall Square in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1986 near MIT. nCUBE was a series of Parallel computing computers from the company of the same name MasPar Computer Corporation was a Minisupercomputer vendor that was founded in 1987 by Jeff Kalb. Meiko Scientific Ltd was a British Supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer At first Cray Research denigrated such approaches, complaining that developing software to effectively use the machines was difficult—which was true in the era of the ILLIAC IV, but becoming less so each day. ILLIAC IV was one of the most infamous Supercomputers ever in a series of research machines ILLIACs, from the University of Illinois. Eventually Cray realized that the approach was likely the only way forward and started a five year project to capture the lead in this area as well. The result was the DEC Alpha-based Cray T3D and Cray T3E series, which ironically left Cray as the only remaining supercomputer vendor in the market by 2000. Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit Reduced instruction set computer (RISC Instruction set architecture (ISA developed The T3D ( Torus 3-Dimensional) was Cray Research 's first attempt at a Massively parallel Supercomputer architecture The Cray T3E was Cray Research 's second-generation Massively parallel supercomputer architecture launched in 1995

Cray computers were extremely expensive machines, and the number of units sold were small compared to ordinary mainframes. Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are Computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications typically bulk data Thus, most sites with a Cray installation considered it quite prestigious to be a member of the "exclusive club" of Cray operators. This perception extended to countries as well. To boost the perception of exclusivity, Cray Research's marketing department had promotional neckties made with a mosaic of tiny national flags illustrating the "club of Cray-operating countries". The necktie (or tie) is a long piece of cloth worn around the neck resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat A national flag is a Flag that symbolises a country The flag is flown by the government but usually can be flown by Citizens of that country as well (Computer History Museum, Cray 1 30th Anniversary recorded presentation, 2006)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of new vendors introduced small supercomputers, known as minisupercomputers (as opposed to superminis), which started to erode the market that would have otherwise considered a low-end Cray machine. Minisupercomputers constituted a class of Computers that emerged in the mid-1980s Particularly popular was the Convex Computer series, as well as a number of small-scale parallel machines from companies like Pyramid Technology and Alliant Computer Systems. Convex Computer was a company that produced a number of vector Minisupercomputers Supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses Pyramid Technology was a Computer company that produced a number of RISC -based Minicomputers at the upper end of the performance range Alliant Computer Systems was a computer company that designed and manufactured Parallel computing systems One such company was Supertek, whose S-1 machine was an air-cooled CMOS implementation of the X-MP processor. Supertek Computers Inc was a computer company founded in Santa Clara California in 1985 by Mike Fung an ex- Hewlett-Packard Project manager, with the Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ( CMOS) (pronounced "see-moss" siːmɔːs ˈsiːmɒs is a major class of Integrated circuits CMOS technology Cray purchased Supertek in 1990 and sold the S-1 as the Cray XMS, but the machine proved problematic. The Cray XMS was a Vector processor Minisupercomputer sold by Cray Research from 1990 to 1991 Meanwhile their not-yet-completed S-2, a Y-MP clone, was later offered as the Cray Y-MP EL (later becoming the EL90 series), which started to sell in reasonable numbers in 1991/2. The Cray Y-MP was a Supercomputer sold by Cray Research from 1988, and the successor to the company's X-MP. The Cray EL90 series was an air-cooled Vector processor Supercomputer first sold by Cray Research in 1993 These systems were sold to smaller companies, notably in oil exploration. This line evolved into the Cray J90 and eventually the Cray SV1 in 1998. The Cray J90 series (code-named Jedi during development was an air-cooled Vector processor Supercomputer first sold by Cray Research The Cray SV1 was a Vector processor Supercomputer, first manufactured by the Cray Research division of Silicon Graphics in 1998

In December 1991, Cray purchased some of the assets of Floating Point Systems, another minisuper vendor who had moved into the file server market with their SPARC-based Model 500 line. Floating Point Systems Inc (FPS was a Beaverton Oregon vendor of Minisupercomputers The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer In Computing, a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for the shared storage of Computer files (such SPARC (from Scalable Processor Architecture is a RISC Microprocessor Instruction set architecture originally ^[1] These SMP machines scaled up to 64 processors and ran a modified version of Sun Microsystems' Solaris. In Computing, symmetric multiprocessing or SMP involves a Multiprocessor computer-architecture where two or more identical processors can connect to a single Sun Microsystems Inc ( is a multinational vendor of Computers computer components Computer software, and Information technology services Solaris is a Unix -based Operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS. Cray set up Cray Research Superservers, Inc. (later the Business Systems Division) to sell this system as the Cray S-MP, later replacing it with the Cray CS6400. The Cray S-MP was a Multiprocessor Server computer sold by Cray Research from 1992 to 1993 The Cray Superserver 6400, or CS6400, was a Multiprocessor server Computer system produced by Cray Research Superservers Inc In spite of these machines being some of the most powerful available when applied to appropriate workloads Cray was never very successful in this market, possibly due to it being so foreign to their existing market niche.

Silicon Graphics: 1996 to 2000

Cray Research merged with Silicon Graphics (SGI) in February 1996. Silicon Graphics Inc (commonly initialised to SGI, historically sometimes referred to as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) is a company At the time the industry was highly critical of the move, noting that there was little overlap between the two companies in terms of market or technology. Founder Seymour Cray was killed in a traffic accident later that year.

SGI immediately sold off the Superservers business to Sun, who quickly turned the UltraSPARC-based Starfire project then under development into the extremely successful Enterprise 10000 range of servers. Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001

SGI did use a number of Cray technologies in their attempt to move from the graphics workstation market into supercomputing. Key among these was the use of the Cray-developed HIPPI data-bus and details of the interconnects used in the T3 series. HIPPI ( HIgh Performance Parallel Interface) is a Computer bus for the attachment of high speed storage devices to Supercomputers It was popular in the late In Computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a Computer or between computers

SGI's long-term strategy was to merge their high-end server line with Cray's product lines in two phases, code-named SN1 and SN2 (SN standing for "Scalable Node"). The SN1 was intended to replace the T3E and SGI Origin 2000 systems and later became the SN-MIPS or SGI Origin 3000 architecture. The SGI Origin 2000, code named Lego, is a family of mid-range and high-end servers developed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in 1996 to succeed the The Origin 3000 and the Onyx 3000 is a family of mid-range and high-end computers developed and manufactured by SGI. The SN2 was originally intended to unify all high-end/supercomputer product lines including the T90 into a single architecture. This goal was never achieved before SGI divested itself of the Cray business, and the SN2 name was later associated with the SN-IA or SGI Altix 3000 architecture. Altix is Silicon Graphics ' line of servers and supercomputers

Under SGI ownership, one new Cray model line, the SV1, was launched in 1998. This was a clustered SMP vector processor architecture, developed from J90 technology.

SGI set up a separate Cray Research Business Unit in August 1999 in preparation for detachment. On March 2, 2000, the unit was sold to Tera Computer Company. Events 986 - Louis V becomes King of the Franks. 1127 - Assassination of Charles the Good 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. Tera Computer Company was a manufacturer of High-performance computing software and hardware, founded in 1987 in Seattle Washington by Tera Computer Company was then renamed Cray Inc. when the deal closed on April 4. Events 1581 - Francis Drake completes a circumnavigation of the world and is knighted by Elizabeth I.

Cray Inc. : 2000 to present

After the Tera merger, the Tera MTA system was relaunched as the Cray MTA-2. The Cray MTA-2 is a Shared-Memory MIMD computer marketed by Cray Inc This was not a commercial success and shipped to only two customers. Cray Inc. also badged the NEC SX-6 supercomputer as the Cray SX-6 and acquired exclusive rights to sell the SX-6 in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The SX-6 is a Supercomputer built by NEC Corporation that debuted in 2001; the SX-6 was sold under license The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America.

In 2002, Cray Inc. announced their first new model, the Cray X1 combined architecture vector / MPP supercomputer. The Cray X1 is a Non-uniform memory access, Vector processor Supercomputer manufactured and sold by Cray Inc A vector processor, or array processor, is a CPU design where the instruction set includes operations that can perform mathematical operations on multiple data Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science life science medical diagnostics and other fields Previously known as the SV2, the X1 is the end result of the earlier SN2 concept originated during the SGI years. In May 2004, Cray was announced to be one of the partners in the U.S. Department of Energy's fastest-computer-in-the-world project to build a 50 teraflops machine for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The United States Department of Energy ( DOE) is a Cabinet -level department of the United States government responsible for energy policy Measuring performance In order for FLOPS to be useful as a measure of floating-point performance a standard benchmark must be available on all computers of interest Oak Ridge National Laboratory ( ORNL) is a multiprogram science and technology National laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by As of November 2004, the Cray X1 has a maximum measured performance of 5. The Cray X1 is a Non-uniform memory access, Vector processor Supercomputer manufactured and sold by Cray Inc 9 teraflops, being the 29th fastest supercomputer in the world. Since then the X1 has been superseded by the X1E, with faster dual-core processors.

On 4 October 2004, the company announced the Cray XD1 range of entry-level supercomputers which use dual-core 64-bit AMD Opteron CPUs running Linux. Events 610 - Heraclius arrives by ship from Africa at Constantinople, overthrows Byzantine Emperor Phocas "MMIV" redirects here For the Modest Mouse album see " Baron von Bullshit Rides Again " The Cray XD1 is an entry-level Supercomputer range made by Cray Inc '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. The Opteron is AMD 's X86 server processor line and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 Instruction set architecture (known Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks This system was previously known as the OctigaBay 12K before Cray's acquisition of that company. The XD1 provides one Xilinx Virtex II Pro field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with each node of four Opteron processors. Xilinx Inc ( is the world's largest developer and fabless manufacturer of a class of reconfigurable hardware chips known as Field-programmable gate arrays FPGAs should not be confused with the Flip-chip pin grid array, a form of integrated circuit packaging The FPGAs can be configured to embody various digital hardware designs and so can augment the processing or input/output capabilities of the Opteron processors. Furthermore, each FPGA contains a pair of PowerPC 405 processors; these can add to the already considerable power of a single node. PowerPC is a RISC Instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance known as AIM

Also in 2004, Cray completed the Red Storm system for Sandia National Laboratories. Red Storm is a Supercomputer architecture designed for the ASCI Thor's Hammer supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratory by Cray Inc. Sandia National Laboratories which is managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation) is a major United This has processors clustered in 96-processor cabinets, a theoretical maximum of 300 cabinets in a machine, and a design speed of 41. 5 teraflops. The Cray XT3 massively parallel supercomputer is a commercialized version of Red Storm, similar in many respects to the earlier T3E architecture, but, like the XD1, using AMD Opteron processors. The Cray XT3 is a distributed memory Massively parallel MIMD Supercomputer designed by Cray Inc The Cray XT4, introduced in 2006 added support for DDR2 memories, newer dual-core and future quad-core Opteron processors. The Cray XT4 (codenamed Hood during development is an updated version of the Cray XT3 Supercomputer. The Opteron is AMD 's X86 server processor line and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 Instruction set architecture (known The XT4 also allows FPGA chips to be plugged directly into processor sockets, unlike the XD1, which required a dedicated socket for the FPGA coprocessor. FPGAs should not be confused with the Flip-chip pin grid array, a form of integrated circuit packaging The XT4 also uses the second generation SeaStar2 communication coprocessor. [1]

On 13 November 2006, Cray announced a new system, the Cray XMT, based on the MTA series of machines, and expects to ship the machines in 2007. Events 1002 - English king Ethelred orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The Cray XMT (codenamed Eldorado) is the third generation of the Cray MTA Supercomputer architecture originally developed by Tera. [2] [3]. This system combines multi-threaded processors, as used on the original Tera systems, and the SeaStar2 interconnect used by the XT4. By reusing ASICs, boards, cabinets, and system software used by the comparatively higher volume XT4 product, the cost of making the very specialized MTA system can be reduced.

In 2006, Cray announced a new vision of products dubbed 'Adaptive Supercomputing'^[2]. The first generation of such systems, dubbed the Rainier Project, use a common interconnect network, programming environment, cabinet design, and I/O subsystem. These systems include the XT4, and the XMT. The second generation, launched as the XT5h, allows a system to combine compute elements of various types into a common system, sharing infrastructure. The Cray XT5 is an updated version of the Cray XT4 Supercomputer. The XT5h is able to combine Opteron, vector, multithreaded, and FPGA compute processors in a single system. FPGAs should not be confused with the Flip-chip pin grid array, a form of integrated circuit packaging Cascade^[3] systems will make use of future Opteron processors, and a "Multithreaded Vector Processor" (MVP) accelerator; this processor can switch between vector-style operation, like that of the X2 processor, and multithreaded operation like the XMT. The Cray X2 is a Vector processing node for the Cray XT5h Supercomputer, developed and sold by Cray Inc These systems, codenamed Marble and Granite, are scheduled to be introduced in 2010-2011.

References

• Murray, Charles J. (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-04885-2.

External links

• Cray, Inc. Corporate Website
• spring 2007 technical workshop
  • XD1 Overview
• Cray Research and Cray Inc. history
• Cray-Cyber.org - Working Cray machines with free login
• Yahoo! - Cray Inc. Company Profile
• Top 500 Supercomputers
• Fred Gannett's Cray Supercomputer FAQ
• Cray User Group
• Cray Research Alumni Site
• DigiBarn Computer Museum: Cray Supercomputers and Memorabilia
• Cray headquarters is at coordinates 38°46′56″N 104°48′17″W / 38.782324, -104.804742

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