CRAY Inc.

CRAY Inc. () is a company manufacturer of the Superordinateur S. Fondée in 1972 by Seymour CRAY under the name CRAY Research it names today CRAY Inc. after its fusion with Tera Company Computer.

CRAY-1

The CRAY-1, invented by Seymour CRAY was launched in 1976. It is about a Supercalculateur with vectorial Architecture. It is built around a given rhythm Processeur 64 bits has 83 MHz, equipped with 8 Mo of random access memory and cooled with the Fréon. It reaches a computing power of 166 MFLOPS (or Méga - FAILURES), that is to say the average power of a desktop machine twenty years later. One of the innovations of this machine is its shape in arc of circle which makes it possible to reduce the lengths of various wire. This supercomputer weighing nearly 5 tons cost nearly 9 dollars million at the time. The 1st CRAY-1 was delivered to “Los Alamos National Laboratory” and on the whole 16 machines were produced.

CRAY X-MP

CRAY X-MP, mainly invented by Steve Chen, was launched in 1982. This supercomputer is almost identical to the CRAY-1 as regards external appearance, in particular for its horseshoe shape, but it is equipped with two given rhythm processors with 105 MHz, being able to assemble to 200 MFLOPS each one. This model will be improved thereafter to give birth in 1984 to the four-processor CRAY X-MP/48, each CPU being given rhythm to 117 MHz, for a theoretical unit power of 230 MFLOPS.

CRAY-2

The CRAY-2, invented by Seymour CRAY and launched in 1985, was the first supercomputer to exceed the GFLOPS. Functioning under the system Unix, it is composed of 2 to 4 processors functioning with 283 MHz and can address up to 4 Go of memory. Its power is estimated at 1.7 GFLOPS (or Giga - FAILURES) (for the configuration 4 processors). For this machine, cooling had to be particularly studied. The adopted solution was to immerse the whole of the system in a conducting liquid of heat and insulator (the Perfluorocarbone of the mark).

A specimen of the CRAY-2 is exposed in the permanent collection of the Musée of arts and trades to Paris in France.

CRAY-3

Successor of the CRAY-2, this machine was the first notable application containing Gallium arsenide. This supercomputer could never be really produced, in particular by fault of means, and caused the bankruptcy of CRAY Research in 1995. SGI then repurchased CRAY Research to resell it in March 2000 with Tera Computer Company (which chose to re-elect CRAY Inc. as of April 2000).

External bond

CRAY Inc.

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