This video explores the life and legacy of Seymour Cray, widely recognized as the father of supercomputing. It traces his journey from early projects at Engineering Research Associates (ERA) (–) through his influential work at Control Data Corporation (CDC) and the eventual founding of Cray Research, Inc. ().
Key developments covered include:
- Foundational Machines: The development and impact of the CDC 1604, CDC 6600, and CDC 7600 (–), which established benchmarks for speed and parallel processing.
- The Cray-1 Era: The creation of the iconic Cray-1 supercomputer (), known for its unique C-shape and revolutionary vector processing capabilities.
- Technological Evolution: The transition from batch-mode operating systems like COS to the adoption of UNIX (via UNICOS) as the industry standard for supercomputing (–).
- Modern Legacy: The video details the evolution of subsequent machines like the Cray-2 and Cray Y-MP (), and the eventual acquisition of Cray by Hewlett Packard in 2019 (111:22).
Hands-on demonstration: Throughout the video, the creator builds a mini Cray Y-MP replica using a 3D printer and a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to simulate and run a historical Cray environment (–).
Seymour Cray was the farther of supercomputers, giving us some vital technologies we all still use today, and creating some of the most iconic computers.
This video is sponsored by PCBWay (https://www.pcbway.com)
The case was designed by Dave Nunez, there is a link to the thingiverse page with the STL files, and the video he did about it.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2610764
The cray simulator can be found at https://github.com/andrastantos/cray-sim
00:00 – Intro
00:31 – The early years
06:55 – A word from our sponsors
07:31 – CDC 1604
12:06 – CDC 3600
15:22 – CDC 6600
17:49 – Superscaler
21:31 – CDC 7600
27:30 – CDC 8600
32:35 – Cray Research Inc
37:34 – The cray 1
41:40 – The OS
47:21 – The Cray2 and the XMP
51:21 – Making our own Cray-YMP
54:08 – Getting the software running
57:10 – Unicos is alive!!
1:03:07 – COS batch mode
1:05:18 – Chen and Cray
1:11:22 – Cray the man
1:14:00 – Tunneling ?
1:15:51 – So long and thanks for all the fish
About The Author
