Cray Machine Families

Supercomputers going cheep ( too cheep ? ) 1997

The end of the ’90s was tough few years for supercomputers. These articles describe the spat that broke out between Cray and NEC a Japanese firms that was accused of selling supercomputers at less than cost price. After the spat was settled Cray entered an agreement to resell NEC supers SX-5 & SX-6 into the …

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NCAR / UCAR a research site with a long association with Cray supercomputers.

The National Centre for Atmospheric Research NCAR/UCAR in Colorado has a long association with Cray supercomputers. Starting in 1977 with the Cray-1 SN3 the site invested in some the best supercomputers available.  More recently a Cray Petaflop class machines will be used to explore climate research. In 2021 the site awaits the commissioning of Derecho …

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Florida State University replace ETA-10 with Cray YMP from 1991 by Jeff Bauer

Also seen at – http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/super-users-view.html A History of Supercomputing at Florida State University Jeff Bauer (Written in early 1991) As the result of an unsolicited proposal by the Florida State University (FSU) to the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE), a collaborative agreement was initiated in late 1984 between the State of Florida, FSU, DOE …

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Delayed delivery obsoleted a Cray XMP-EA SN1205 before delivery.

This cautionary tale of how a USD10 million Cray machine was built but never delivered due to regulatory delay. Turns out it was not super-computers but more likely to be a rogue scientist that let the nuke secrets out the flask. From Wikipedia:  “In 2004, the Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a key figure in …

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Cray Research systems install base in the ’90s

This chart shows the approximate installed base of active Cray Research systems during the 1990s. The  data that shows the XMP (red) being phased out in favour of the YMP (green) and the rise of the smaller J90 and EL systems (orange and yellow) in the later 1990s. The peek system install base in 1996 being …

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Cray Customer Service – Memories (1979 to 2014) by Charles Clark

Cray Customer Service – Memories (1979 to 2014) a personal memoir by Charles “Charlie” Clark I have seen lots of articles on Cray Supercomputers, their design. development, uses and installations, but I haven’t seen too much documented on the WEB about the Cray Engineers and Analysts who supported these systems in the field so I …

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T90 & C90 mini movies and T3D videos

This collection of movies was distributed on a sales related CD and demonstrated some of the tasks that T90s and other Cray supercomputer systems performed. These are in Quicktime.mov format and are of low resolution which was normal for the time. Enjoy.   Mini movie Bucket or T90 and C90 Mini movies  Note: You may …

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Links to Videos of Interest

A few links to videos of interest to Cray-History visitors. Most of these are created by the Computer History Museum. What’s All This About Gallium Arsenide?, lecture by Seymour Cray at Super computing 1988 includes industry history. The CRAY T3D Massively Parallel Processing System, lecture by Stephen Nelson and Steven Oberlin Cray Research – A …

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EL and C90 Poster Centerfolds

These two posters appeared side by side in Cray Channels V13_N4 as centre folds. Also distributed as wall posters. These two machines, at the opposite ends of the Cray performance spectrum, nevertheless less ran the same UNICOS operating systems and compiler environments. The EL often appeared at larger Cray sites acting as a software development …

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Serial Number 1

The first of a kind always holds special interest for historians and serial number one, the first Cray-1 computer system is no exception. Made in 1976 this machine, really just the prototype but proved it’s worth at 6 sites paving the way for early sales of Cray Research Supercomputers. Serial Number 1 World Traveller From Cray …

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About The Chippewa Falls museum of Industry and Technology with Serial Number 1 and Serial Number 101

The Chippewa Falls museum of Industry and Technology is of particular interest to followers of supercomputing technology. The museum located in home town of supercomputer maker Cray Research and holds the assets of the original Cray Corporate Computer museum. Included in the collection is Serial Number 1, the first Cray-1 supercomputer and Serial Number 101 …

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The Supermen by Charles J. Murray

A great book about the early days ( up to 1995 ) Link on Amazon. “The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical wizards behind the supercomputer” The Supermen Book cover Cover Blerb After a rare speech at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in 1976, programmers in the audience had suddenly …

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Cray System Installation photos

Getting a new machine is always an exciting moment for customers and the installation engineer’s who often spend many hours testing and configuring the systems ready for acceptance. Your install picture are solicited for this entry. Email over to the contact address. Install Timelapse YouTubes: Installing Jaguar, update to Kraken  Time lapse Upgrading Kraken processors Upgrading …

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High Performance Computing Workshop “Performance Programming on the Cray YMP-EL” 

High Performance Computing Workshop Performance Programming on the Cray YMP-EL by Dr. Andrew J. Pounds High Performance Computing Group Georgia Institutute of Technology. Click link for .pdf High performance programmining on the Cray EL Vector_OCR  A great introduction into how to make your programs run fast on a Cray EL.  

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