Cray-1

Cray-1

Cray-1 preserved at the Deutsches Museum
Developer	Cray Research
Manufacturer	Cray Research
Product family	64-bit system
Type	supercomputer
Release date	1975
Introductory price	1977 US$8.86 million ($7.9 million plus $1 million for the disks)
Discontinued	1982
Units sold	Over 80
Operating system	Cray Operating System
CPU	160 MFLOPS
Memory	1 million words of main memory
Power	115 kW
Weight	5.5 tons (Cray-1A)
Successor	Cray X-MP

The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured and marketed by Cray Research. The first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 and it went on to become one of the best known and most successful supercomputers in history. The Cray-1's architect was Seymour Cray; the chief engineer was Cray Research co-founder Lester Davis.

In the years 1968 to 1972, Cray was working at Control Data Corporation (CDC) on a new machine known as the CDC 8600, the logical successor to his earlier CDC 6600 and CDC 7600 designs. The 8600 was essentially made up of four 7600s in a box with an additional special mode that allowed them to operate lock-step in a SIMD fashion.

Jim Thornton, formerly Cray's engineering partner on earlier designs, had started a more radical project known as the CDC STAR-100. Unlike the 8600's brute-force approach to performance, the STAR took an entirely different route. In fact the main processor of the STAR had less performance than the 7600, but added additional hardware and instructions to speed up particularly common supercomputer tasks.

By 1972, the 8600 had reached a dead end — the machine was so incredibly complex that it was impossible to get one working properly. Even a single faulty component would render the machine non-operational. Cray went to William Norris, Control Data's CEO, saying that a redesign from scratch was needed. At the time the company was in serious financial trouble, and with the STAR in the pipeline as well, Norris simply could not invest the money.

As a result, Cray left CDC and started a new company HQ only yards from the CDC lab. In the back yard of the land he purchased in Chippewa Falls he and a group of former CDC employees started looking for ideas. At first the concept of building another supercomputer seemed impossible, but after Cray's Chief Technology Officer traveled to Wall Street and found a lineup of investors more than willing to back Cray, all that was needed was a design.