"People buy these big computers for emotional reasons, it's not that they really need them at all."
- Seymour Cray
His work was at the core of actions which changed the world. With the computers he designed and built used in many fields, Seymour Cray, an American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect, is rightfully recognized as the Father of Supercomputing.
Seymour Cray's computer creations have been the most influential engines and the fastest in the world for decades.
His creations influence the change in science and technology, as well as the today's modern computers. Many of the things that high performance computers now do routinely were at the farthest edge of credibility when Seymour Cray envisioned them.
Early Life
Seymour Roger Cray was born in September 28th, 1925, to Seymour R., a civil engineer who fostered Cray's interest in science and engineering, and Lillian Cray. Cray was brought up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
At the age of ten, Cray was able to build a device out of Erector Set components that converted punched paper tape into Morse code signals. With his high interest in technology, his house basement was given over to him as a "laboratory".
Cray graduated from Chippewa Falls High School in 1943 before being drafted for World War II as a radio operator. He saw action in Europe, and then moved to the Pacific theatre where he worked on breaking Japanese naval codes. On his return to the United States he received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1949. He also was awarded a M.Sc. in applied mathematics in 1951.
Control Data Corporation
After graduation, in 1951, he joined the St. Pauls based Engineering Research Associates (ERA), a start up company in Saint Paul, Minnesota that was developing cryptographic equipment for the US navy. At ERA, Cray had his chance to design his first computer, the 1103. With his computer, Cray quickly came to be regarded as an expert on digital computer technology.
ERA was taken over first by Remington Rand and later by Sperry Corporation (Sperry-Rand), which produced one of the first commercial computer, the UNIVAC.
In 1957, Seymour Cray was one of a small team of engineer employees who left Sperry-Rand and started Control Data Corporation (CDC). The team set up in a disused warehouse at 501 Park Avenue, where in they designed and produced their first machine, an improved low-cost ERA 1103, the CDC 1604 by the year 1960.
As CDC 1604 began its debut on the market, Cray already designed its successor, the CDC 6600, built using 400 thousand silicon planar transistors, an invention that changed the future of computers forever.
The CDC 6600 was the first commercial supercomputer, outperforming everything in its time by a wide margin. When IBM and other companies attempted to create machines with similar performance, Cray already released the CDC 7600 which was 5 times faster.
Chippewa Falls
After the 6600 and the 7600 made their successful entries in the market, internal conflicts forced Cray to start another lab in his hometown of Chippewa Falls with the help of CDC's CEO, William Norris. In this new lab, Cray started development of the 7600 replacement, the CDC 8600. It was this project that finally ended his run of successes at CDC in 1972.
Although the 6600 and 7600 had been huge successes, both projects had almost bankrupted the company while they were being designed. The 8600 was running into similar difficulties and Cray eventually decided that the only solution was to start over fresh. This time Norris left the company unwilling to work under the new conditions the company has made to fund the 8600 with CDC STAR-100.
Cray Research
After leaving the company, Seymour Cray started Cray Research in his Chippewa property with $300,000 start up investment from Norris. And because of Cray's well-known reputation, the financial world was more than willing to provide Cray with all the money they would need to develop a new machine.
With $5 million budget and several years of development, they released their first product on 1975, the Cray-1. With its 120Mhz, speed, the new supercomputer was extremely fast that it outperformed almost everything, including the STAR-100. At that time, the Cray-1 only lost to the the first supercomputer ever built, the ILLIAC IV by nearly 12 months.
Based on sales of similar machines from the CDC era, the company's early estimates had suggested that they might sell a dozen such machines, so the price was set accordingly. Eventually, over 80 Cray-1s were sold, and the company was a huge success financially.
The Cray-1 was followed with the design of the Cray-2. This machine failed to take off in the market, but Cray had high hopes in his next creation, the Cray-3, which was to use Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and innovative materials at the limit of existing technology.
As the Cray-3 project started he found himself once again being "bothered" too much with day-to-day tasks. In order to concentrate on design, Cray left the CEO position of Cray Research in 1980 to become an independent contractor, working from a new laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, near the site of NCAR and the earlier attempted Cray Laboratories.
In 1989 Cray was faced with a repeat of history when the Cray-3 started to run into difficulties. An upgrade of the earlier model, the X-MP, using high-speed memory from the Cray-2 was under development when once again the management was faced with two projects and budget issues. They eventually decided to take the safer route, releasing the new design as the Cray Y-MP in 1988.
With the repeat of conflicts from policy makers and financial executives, Cray left his CEO position and the company and once again built a company, Cray Computers Corporation, in Colorado Springs to pursue his dream of building the Cray-3.
Cray Computers Corporation
With Cray Computer Corporation, Seymour Cray was taking the Cray-3 project far exceeding its predecessor by ten folds. The Cray-3 featured Gallium Arsenide that was able to give a much higher switching speeds and less energy usage with cooler temperature.
The team was able to get the 500Mhz prototype machine working and installed their first example at NCAR. By this time a number of massively parallel machines were coming into the market at price/performance points the Cray-3 could not touch. Cray responded by starting design of the Cray-4 which would run at 1 GHz and outpower these machines, regardless of price.
In 1995 there had been no further sales of the Cray-3, and the ending of the Cold War made it unlikely anyone would buy enough Cray-4s to offer a return on the development funds. The company ran out of money and filed bankruptcy on March 24, 1995.
SRC Computers
Cray started a new company, SRC Computers, to pursue his lifelong ambition for always designing and producing the most powerful computer in the world.
With SRC Computers, Seymour Cray designed his own massively parallel machine. The new design concentrated on communications and memory performance that hampered many parallel designs.
Personal Life And Death
Seymour Cray died in October 5, 1996 at the age of 71 from a head and neck injuries in a traffic collision that rolled his car. From the accident that happened two weeks earlier, Cray underwent emergency surgery and hospitalized.
Seymour Cray died not long after the design of his parallel machine started.
Behind his ambitions to exceed technology of his time with his single minded mission, during his life, Seymour Cray that never liked marketing exposure and publicity, led a streamlined life with his often charming persona. On his free times, he enjoyed sports like skiing and tennis.