Seymour Cray -- Father of the Supercomputing Industry

[thejameskan]

love the video really good

[willbirful]

interesting video and very informative

[ebr2003]

WOW!

[computerflyer]

To answer a question, the Cyber 176 did have a NOS version, but NOS never supported the 7000 FLPPs, only the slower 6000 PPs. I was part of the grander porting program in 1979 while working at CDC.

[UncleJoel985]

He seemed to change his mind a lot. Opposed to parallel computing (multiple instruction streams, not just SIMD) in favor of a fast single core, he later embraced parallel computing. Also ridiculed virtual memory as only for farmers, then doing a reverse, saying farmers buy a lot of computers.

I like that. It seemed he strived for simplicity & elegance, until technological reality made an approach no longer feasible.

[corkkyle]

..."That's enough." Seymour Cray, what a fantastic mind.

[lostinxlation]

I still remember the day he died. I was sitting in front of my workstation, doing my work for our microprocessor project when someone in our team sent a mass email to all the team members. That was the news about accident that killed Cray. Apparently, some idiot in Camaro crashed into Cray's SUV. Since I had worked on supercomputer developmemt a few years before that time, I felt like the biggest star in the universe falling. It was a very shocking day I still remember.

[gnossticc]

@VRTO92 When he was told that Apple Computer had just bought a Cray to help design the next Apple Macintosh, Cray commented that he had just bought a Macintosh to design the next Cray.

[VRTO92]

@gnossticc yeah.. I kinda realized that . and in 9 months I kinda got respect for apple.. so.. I think I'll just delete my stupid ass comment

[gnossticc]

@VRTO92 It's alright, they all made great contributions to the computer industry.

[dippywatcher]

I first started learning UCSD Pascal v 1.0 on a CDC 7600 running NOS in 1981.

RMIT Engineering faculty, Melbourne. Much later I discovered what the mainframe

we ran our jobs on actually was. Amazing...

At the time it was annoying with submit times of ten minutes (600 users)

and the thing would crash often... but it was I believe second hand...(!)

[rdvqc]

@dippywatcher I don't know that a 7600 ever ran NOS - only Scope 2. The 6000, Cyber 70 and Cyber 170's all did run NOS (Kronos) and NOS/BE (Scope 3). I am even trying to remember if the Cyber 176 ever ran other than Scope 2. I did work on them all under pretty much all operating systems both for CDC and clients.

They were probably the most fun systems I have worked on in a 40+ year career.

[arrakisus]

Today, I visited NCAR in Boulder, strictly as a tourist to the facility, where the first commercially available Cray-1 was installed. To my astonishment, they still had it! It was tucked away in a hallway but open for viewing and touching! I was almost a spiritual moment while standing in the center of the doughnut.

[youngdones]

If it weren't for Cray, we wouldn't be able to run Crysis.

[gnossticc]

@youngdones Do you own a supercomputer? If you own a supercomputer at home can you imagine what the government has or Nasa? Geeee!

[youngdones]

My Radeon HD 5870 is more computationally powerful than a CRAY-5 supercomputer.

Cray computers were built back in the 1970's. Obviously computers have evolved since then, even in personal computers.

But Seymour Cray really got the ball rolling.

[patachu666]

it's geniuses like him who made the computer world evolve, not people like Ballmer or Steve Jobs. RIP.

[gnossticc]

@patachu666 Yeah, right. 

[ezkaton999]

I just finished writing a research paper about supercomputing. Before that I didn't know who Seymour Cray was but after reading The supermen I have a true appreciation for who Seymour Cray was. the world will always need someone like Seymour to push the limits of computing.

Thanks for the upload it is another great tribute to who Seymour was.

[neocoders]

I love the tangible feeling of power you get when you look at a Cray machine.

[Bytefield]

Let me also thank you for posting this. Seymour Cray was a mythical figure when I was in high school--the first Cray-1 had just been installed when I started using computers. I have a circuit board from a Cray-1, it's one of my most prized possessions.

Terry McDougall summarized beautifully what made his designs so successful: he knew how to simplify, but also knew when to stop, when a design was elegant enough. A rare talent, and a great man.

[juliuso1]

Thanks for sharing, what a remarkable man!

[nightowl8936]

Thank you VERY VERY much for posting this video.

I've read and seen many things about Seymour Cray's work, since I first heard about him when I was in Grade 11 in high school, and the Cray 2 had just been introduced.

This is the very first time time I have ever seen and heard Seymour Cray in his own voice talking about his life, and his family.

He was a great, great man.

There is maybe ONE engineer who could compare to Seymour Cray and that's Owen Maynard, who helped USA get to the Moon.

[asgerms]

I think an engineer like Kelly Johnson is also "up there". Made many contributions, but his SR71 was so mindblowingly ahead of it's time when introduced way back in the 60's, and it's crazy that even today it hasn't been beat in terms of perfomance (and cool looks).

[nightowl8936]

"I think an engineer like Kelly Johnson is also up there"

Yes, I would agree with you. I also follow the aerospace industry and history too, and I do know that Kelly Johnson developed lots of amazing aircraft as head of the Skunk Works, and also pioneered the Skunk Works way of working.

Seymour Cray's team for (I think) the CDC 6600 also employed a Skunk Works style approach with 34 people, which made the head of IBM mad at his own people.

Both men innovated to the extreme, so I agree.

[dippywatcher]

@asgerms Yep, For sure. And the whole team. Ditto Crays team.

But those dudes were true geniuses. You don't get 'em now. Too much fluoride in the water...