Cray Inc.
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Template:Redirect Cray Inc. (Template:NASDAQ) is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Already a legend in his field by this time, Cray put his company on the map in 1976 with the release of the Cray-1 vector computer. Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995, while Cray Research was bought by SGI the next year. Cray Inc. was formed in 2000 when Tera Computer Company purchased the Cray Research business from SGI and adopted the name of its acquisition. Image:CRAY2 logo.jpg
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Company history
The Cray Research years
Seymour Cray began working in the computing field in 1950 when he joined Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. There, he helped to create the ERA 1103, regarded as the first successful scientific computer. ERA eventually became part of UNIVAC, and started to be phased out. He left the company in 1960, a few years after some former ERA employees set up Control Data Corporation (CDC). He eventually set up a lab at his home in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, about 85 miles to the east. Cray left CDC in 1972 to form his own company, Cray Research, with research and development facilities in Chippewa Falls but with the business headquarters back in Minneapolis.
Image:Cray.jpeg The Cray-1 was a major success when it was released, faster than all computers at the time except for the ILLIAC IV. The first system was sold within a month for US$8.8 million. Seymour Cray continued working, this time on the Cray-2, though in the end it only ended up being marginally faster than the Cray X-MP, developed by another team at the company.
He soon left the CEO position to become an independent contractor. Cray started a new VLSI technology lab for the Cray-2 in Boulder, Colorado, Cray Laboratories, in 1979. The Labs were closed in 1982, but Cray later headed a similar spin-off in 1989, forming Cray Computer Corporation (CCC) in Colorado Springs. Seymour Cray worked there on the Cray-3 project, the first attempt at major use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors in computing. However, the changing political climate (collapse of Warsaw Pact and the end of Cold War) resulted in poor sales (only one Cray-3 was delivered), and the company fell by the wayside, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 1995. CCC's remains then begat Cray's final corporation SRC Computers, Inc. which still exists.
Cray Research, with Steve Chen, continued with the line originally started with the X-MP, adding the Cray Y-MP and then Cray C90 and Cray T90, developments of that series. All of these machines essentially comprised multiple Cray-1's in a box, two to four in the X-MP, up to thirty-two in the later machines. Because of the uncertainty of the Cray-2 project, a number of Cray-object-code compatible "Crayette" firms started: Scientific Computer Systems (SCS), American Supercomputer, Supertek, and perhaps at least one other firm. Not meant to compete against Cray, these firms attempted less expensive, slower CMOS versions of the X-MP with the release of the COS operating system (SCS) and the CFT Fortran compiler. All these firms also considered National Labs (LANL/LLNL) developed CTSS operating system as well before caving in to the tide of Unixes.
In the late 1980s the high-performance market began to be overtaken by a series of massively parallel computers, led by pioneers Thinking Machines, Kendall Square Research, nCUBE, MasPar and Meiko Scientific. At first Cray Research denigrated such approaches, complaining that developing software to effectively use the machines was difficult—which was true in the era of the ILLIAC IV, but becoming less so each day. Eventually Cray realized that the approach was likely the only way forward and started a five year project to capture the lead in this area as well. The result was the DEC Alpha-based Cray T3D and Cray T3E series, which ironically left Cray as the only remaining supercomputer vendor in the market by 2000.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of new vendors introduced small supercomputers, known as minisupercomputers (as opposed to superminis), which started to erode the market that would have otherwise considered a low-end Cray machine. Particularly popular was the Convex Computer series, as well as a number of small-scale parallel machines from companies like Pyramid Technology and Alliant Computer Systems. One such company was SuperTek, whose S-1 machine was an air-cooled CMOS implementation of the X-MP processor. Cray purchased SuperTek in 1989 and sold the S-1 as the Cray XMS, but the machine proved problematic. Meanwhile their not-yet-completed S-2, a Y-MP clone, was later offered as the Cray Y-MP EL (later becoming the EL90 series), which started to sell in reasonable numbers in 1991/2. These systems were sold to smaller companies, notably in oil exploration. This line evolved into the Cray J90 and eventually the Cray SV1 in 1998.
Cray also purchased some of the assets of Floating Point Systems, another minisuper vendor who had moved into the file server market with their SPARC-based Model 500 line. These SMP machines scaled up to 64 processors and ran a modified version of Sun Microsystems' Solaris. Cray set up Cray Research Superservers, Inc. (later the Business Systems Division) to sell this system as the Cray S-MP, later upgrading it with faster SuperSPARCs as the Cray CS6400. Cray was never very successful in this market even though their design was one of the most powerful available, possibly due to it being foreign to their existing market niche.
The SGI years
Cray Research merged with Silicon Graphics (SGI) in February 1996. At the time the industry was highly critical of the move, noting that there was little overlap between the two companies in terms of market or technology.
SGI immediately sold off the Superservers business to Sun, who quickly turned the UltraSPARC-based Starfire project then under development into the extremely successful Enterprise 10000 range of servers. These continue to be sold to this day, and only recently have traditional Intel-based systems started to approach the performance of the systems Sun picked up almost for free.
SGI did use a number of Cray technologies in their attempt to move from the graphics workstation market into supercomputing. Key among these was the use of the Cray-developed HIPPI data-bus and details of the interconnects used in the T3 series.
SGI's long-term strategy was to merge their high-end server line with Cray's product lines in two phases, code-named SN1 and SN2 (SN standing for "Scalable Node"). The SN1 was intended to replace the T3E and SGI Origin 2000 systems and later became the SN-MIPS or SGI Origin 3000 architecture. The SN2 was originally intended to unify all high-end/supercomputer product lines including the T90 into a single architecture. This goal was never achieved before SGI divested itself of the Cray business, and the SN2 name was later associated with the SN-IA or SGI Altix 3000 architecture.
Under SGI ownership, one new Cray model line was launched, the SV1, in 1998. This was a clustered SMP vector processor architecture, developed from J90 technology.
SGI set up a separate Cray Research Business Unit in August 1999 in preparation for detachment. On March 2 2000, the unit was sold to Tera Computer Company. Tera Computer Company was then renamed Cray Inc. when the deal closed on April 4 2000.
Cray Inc.
After the Tera merger, the Tera MTA system was relaunched as the Cray MTA-2. This was not a commercial success and only shipped to two customers. Cray Inc. also badged the NEC SX-6 supercomputer as the Cray SX-6 and acquired exclusive rights to sell the SX-6 in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
In 2002, Cray Inc. announced their first new model, the Cray X1 combined architecture vector / MPP supercomputer. Previously known as the SV2, the X1 is the end result of the earlier SN2 concept originated during the SGI years. In May 2004, Cray was announced to be one of the partners in the U.S. Department of Energy's fastest-computer-in-the-world project to build a 50 teraflops machine for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As of November 2004, the Cray X1 has a maximum measured performance of 5.9 teraflops, being the 29th fastest supercomputer in the world. Since then the X1 has been superseded by the X1E, with faster dual-core processors.
On 4 October 2004, the company announced the Cray XD1 range of entry-level supercomputers which use 64-bit AMD Opteron CPUs running Linux. This system was previously known as the OctigaBay 12K before Cray's acquisition of that company.
Also in 2004, Cray built the Red Storm system for Sandia National Laboratories. This has processors clustered in 96-processor cabinets, a theoretical maximum of 300 cabinets in a machine, and a design speed of 41.5 teraflops. The Cray XT3 massively parallel supercomputer is a commercialized version of Red Storm, similar in many respects to the earlier T3E architecture, but, like the XD1, using AMD Opteron processors.
Financial troubles 2005–
Cray, Inc. filed an 8-K report (from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) on March 16, 2005 warning of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting, specifically, inadequate review of third-party contracts and lack of software application controls and documentation. Management's disclosure also addressed the possibility of failing SOX 404 compliance testing. "We also expressed our auditors' serious reservations as to whether we will be able to complete our assessment and whether the auditors will be able to render an opinion on our assessment and/or our internal controls (03/16/05 8-K)". Cray's initial filing of its 10-K did not attest to operating effectiveness of internal controls as expected. Notes to the consolidated financial statements included a description of two types of material weaknesses discovered at the time of the report. The amended 10-K report, issued on May 3, 2005, described several material weaknesses in its control environment:
- Control Environment. "Our control environment did not sufficiently promote effective internal control over financial reporting throughout our management structure, and this material weakness was a contributing factor in the development of other material weaknesses described below. Principal contributing factors included the lack of permanent employees in key financial reporting positions, resistance to change of long-held practices developed in an entrepreneurial and trust culture, the lack of a formal program for training members of our finance and accounting group and a lack of a full evaluation of our financial system applications due to incomplete documentation and testing of key controls. Our control environment also contributed to our inability to evaluate fully our general computer controls, financial system application controls and tax controls…"
- Risk Assessment.
- Segregation of Duties. (The following items relate to the financial system application control weaknesses stated above):
- Permitting changes to inventory quantity information within the financial application system without appropriate review;
- Providing users access within our financial application system to areas outside of their responsibilities; and
- Permitting the creation, modification and updating of customer or vendor data without a secondary level of review or approval.
- Inadequate Staffing and Training in Finance and Accounting.
- Inadequate Oversight of Accounting Transactions.
- Inadequate Controls Over Journal Entry Approvals.
- Complex Contract Accounting Procedures.
- Tax Controls.
Cray prefaced its assessment by stating the fact that they were incomplete in their review, "[Management] performed an incomplete review of financial applications and general computer controls and tax controls and did not perform a formalized entity-level risk assessment."
Further contributing to Cray's problems was the loss of both the chief financial officer and financial reporting manager in the fourth quarter of 2004, and the head of information technology in the first quarter of 2005. In the first quarter of 2005 Cray hired a director of internal audit and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance to relieve pressure from the corporate controller. Cray's stock price dropped 56%, from $3.15 per share on March 15, 2005, to $1.38 on May 25, 2005.
On June 15, 2005, a class action suit was filed against Cray on behalf of shareholders who purchased securities between July 31 and May 12. The suit accuses that the company had misrepresented financial data.
In November 2005 Burton Smith, one of Tera's cofounders and Cray's chief scientist, resigned from the corporation to take up a position at Microsoft (Reuters).
Trivia
- As the Cray computers were extremely expensive machines, they were sold in relatively low volumes (compared to ordinary mainframes). Thus, most sites with a Cray installation considered it quite prestigious to be a member of the "exclusive club" of Cray operators. This extended to countries as well. To boost the perception of exclusivity, Cray Research's marketing department had promotional neckties made with a mosaic of tiny national flags illustrating the "club of Cray-operating countries".
- On a similar note as the above-mentioned "club tie", in at least one instance (a Cray X-MP sold to SINTEF/NTH in Norway) Cray delivered the supercomputer system equipped with the purchasing institution's national flag (in this case: Image:Flag of Norway.svg) mounted on a little flagpole on top of the main unit.
- Cray employees have sometimes been known as "Crayons."
- In the 1970s and 1980s, IBM Corp. and Cray Research competed to be the maker of the fastest computer on earth. Cray won every time: a computer that would eventually break the world record set by a previous Cray was a new Cray.
- When in 1986 Apple bought a Cray X-MP and announced that they would use it to design the next Apple Macintosh, Seymour Cray replied, "This is very interesting because I am using an Apple Macintosh to design the Cray-2 supercomputer." Also, when Apple Computer took ownership of the machine they had a party for Apple employees where crayfish were served.
- The Cray T3D MC cabinet had an Apple Macintosh PowerBook laptop built into its front. Its only purpose was to display animated Cray Research and T3D logos on its color LCD screen.
List of computers
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Cray Research (1972–2000; part of SGI 1996–2000)
- Vector processor systems:
- Entry-Level systems:
- MPP systems:
- Cray Research Superservers/Business Systems Division:
Cray Computer Corp. (1989–1995)
Cray Inc. (2000–present; result of merger between Tera Computers and Cray Research)
References
- Murray, Charles J. (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-04885-2.