Seymour Cray is the father of not only the supercomputer, but the supercomputer industry. He is the greatest computer architect humans have spawned thus far. He may be seen here in an unusual personal appearance. Directed by Hud Nordin. In the days before computers, all the greatest hardware hackers were hams. Seymour Roger Cray (SRC), W9???, is no exception. This is why, when he refers to getting a computer to run for the first time, he calls it "getting it on the air." In 1975 I wrote the following dedication in a hardware manual for a seminal computer-controlled music synthesizer: "To Seymour R. Cray, whose works of abstract symmetry will one day be recognized as rivaling those of Johann Sebastian Bach." Unfortunately the manual was never completed, because one of the managers of the laboratory was of the golden opinion that just making noises with a computer didn't warrant a real laboratory "X-" publication. (See: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/cbi00133.html) But it seems that the day may finally have arrived when at least some people, primarily computer architects, can appreciate Seymour's art. It is my sincere desire that this lecture help some future architect avoid at least one of the pitfalls which caused those who traveled the road before him before him to stumble. "To thy happy architects of the future, those of the past send greetings." I was lucky enough to work, for a time, with Bob Johnson, the architect of the commercially-successful line of Burroughs zero-address computers ("stack machines.") (People even joked that the large "B" the computer displayed on its lights when it was in the idle-loop stood for "Bob" instead of "Burroughs.") I once heard Seymour proudly explain at Argonne National Labs how the signals in his elegantly designed Cray-1 were balanced in time-domain; each signal spent exactly half of its time traveling between circuits, and half of its time toggling (or not). Bob was of the opinion that Seymour missed the obvious corollary: That if you were wasting half your time traveling between chips, maybe it was time to pursue higher levels of integration. Maybe Bob was right. All the same, Seymour Cray's commercially-available machines defined the top of the computing performance curve for 3 decades. In such a fundamentally important and competitive field, it is surprising that no one else's accomplishments even come close to rivaling Seymour's. It is rumored that Seymour was instrumental in the design of the small, elegant, version of the Minuteman I nuclear missile installations. It is a stretch for me to believe that one person could design both the 1604 computers (the first commercially-available solid-state computer), and the installation which housed them. But the smaller version does seem to reflect the elegance of his designs. In the nature of classified projects, I guess we'll never know for sure what individual was responsible for eschewing complexity when there must have been extreme pressures to include the kitchen sink. Once, when asked why he had relocated his development group to Chippewa (which I am sure was mainly to avoid the incessant interruptions generated by a large corporation), Seymour replied, "I don't want to get my head blown off." There is a famous story about Seymour that Don Lee (one of the first programmers of the Illiac I) originally told me: Some engineers went on a Pilgrimage to Mecca to visit CDC's "Chippewa Operations," which Seymour built 100 miles East of Minneapolis, nestled amongst the cornfields outside of Chippewa Falls. (Pop. at the time, according to the sign on the water tower: 10,800.) Needless to say, the traveling party got lost. Slogging through the mud, they eventually stumble upon a local farmer working in his field, and ask: "We're looking for a high-tech research lab somewhere around here. Do you know where it is?" The farmer shows no sign of recognition, so the city-slicker continues, "Where's the place where they're building the highest-performance computers in the world?" Still, the farmer doesn't know what they're talking about. Finally the engineer continues, "There's a guy, Seymour Cray, who's building..." "Why didn't you say you was lookin' for Seymour's place?" interrupts the farmer. "It's just over there," he says motioning with his arm. With such celebrity, most people would become jaded. But not Seymour. No one who knew him can say enough about what a friendly and caring person he was. Some of my friends criticize me for spending so much time studying tiny details of the Cray designs -- sometimes down to the point of discussing what kind of screws Seymour chose to assemble certain parts of his computers, and why. They make fun of me for looking up to Seymour as a great personal hero, designer, and person to emulate: Seymour Cray, my hero? Certainly!!! I am proud he ever took the time to even speak to me!

• published: 11 Jun 2011
• views: 6604