principal papers

hardware
^{Cray supercomputers}

software

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related subjects

keywords
supercomputers

Creator of the first super computer Cray I

In 1972, Seymour Cray founded Cray Research to design and build the world's highest performance general-purpose supercomputers. His Cray-1 computer established a new standard in supercomputing upon its introduction in 1976, and his Cray-2 computer system, introduced in 1985, moved supercomputing forward yet again.

In the years following the company's founding, Mr. Cray relinquished the company's management reins to devote more time to computer development. From 1972 to 1977 he served as director, chief executive officer, and president of the company. In October 1977, he left the presidency, but remained chief executive officer and became chairman of the board. In 1980, Mr. Cray resigned as chief executive officer, and in 1981, he stepped aside as chairman of the board to devote himself full time to the Cray-2 project as an independent contractor for Cray Research. For some time, he remained a director and a member of the Policy Committee. Later, Mr. Cray worked to develop a successor to the Cray-2 system and explored gallium arsenide technology.

Mr. Cray spent his entire career designing large-scale computer equipment. He was one of the founders of Control Data Corporation in 1957 and was responsible for the design of that company's most successful large-scale computers, the CDC 1604, 6600, and 7600 systems. He served as a director for CDC from 1957 to 1965 and was senior vice president at the time of his departure in 1972.

From 1950 to 1957, Mr. Cray held several positions with Engineering Research Associates (ERA) of St. Paul, Minnesota. At ERA, he worked on the development of the ERA 1101 scientific computer for the U.S. government. Later, he had design responsibility for a major portion of the ERA 1103, the first commercially successful scientific computer. While with ERA, he worked with the gamut of computer technologies ranging from vacuum tubes and magnetic amplifiers to transistors. Mr. Cray is the inventor of a number of technologies that have been patented by the companies for which he has worked. Among the more significant are the Cray-1 vector register technology, the cooling technologies for the Cray-2 computer, the CDC 6600 freon-cooling system, and a magnetic amplifier for ERA. He also contributed to the Cray-1 cooling technology design.

Mr. Cray earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1950 from the University of Minnesota. In 1951 he earned a master of science degree in applied mathematics from the same institution.

In 1968, he was awarded the W.W. McDowell Award by the American Foundation of Information Processing Societies for his work in the computer field. In 1972 he was presented with the Harry H. Good Memorial Award for his contributions to large-scale computer design and the development of multiprocessing systems.

Mr. Cray was born in 1925 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; he died in 1996 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from injuries suffered from an auto accident.

Biography

scientific diciplines
   primary: Mathematics
   secundairy: Astronomy, Navigation, Geography

Chronology

Honors and awards