Reference:

Speed Addicts. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 1338:27, 26 June 1998. Review of The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer, Charles J. Murray, Wiley, 1997.

By far the most well-known supercomputer designer, almost synonymous with the area as a succession of eponymous companies testify, is Seymour Cray. His relentless efforts over several decades to design the fastest computer in the world have inspired and driven generations of engineers.

Cray's ability to combine theory and practice have been critical to his success; he was as happy with Boolean equations as with soldering computer circuit boards. Despite being a leader in his field, his innovation normally depended on tried and tested technology (typically a decade old). He preferred to allow others to make the first mistake where possible. Where he (and others) did attempt to apply unproved technology, failure often resulted.

The book starts with codebreaking in World War II and the subsequent formation of the company Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in 1946, where Seymour Cray was first employed. Only in Chapter 3 does Cray make an appearance in the book. He immediately made an impact as an engineer with great expertise and confidence that belied his years.

Cray worked for a number of start-up companies subsequently. With William Norris and others he formed Control Data Corporation (CDC) in 1957 which, with Cray at the head of the design team, was to produce what is widely considered the first supercomputer in the world, the CDC6600, in the early 1960s. This took advantage of the newer and faster silicon transistor technology instead of germanium transistors. About a hundred were sold at $8 million each, producing a huge profit for those days. Share values moved from $1 in 1957 to $300 in 1964.

Like many engineers, Cray hated management interference; however, his esteemed position allowed him to partially escape the commercial pressures of management direction by moving his design team to a new laboratory 80 miles from the headquarters in Minneapolis/St. Paul. In the 1960s, even this distance required an operator assisted long distance telephone call which reduced unnecessary communication considerably!

Cray's normal solution to failure when it did occur was to give up completely on the design, found a new company, relocate, and start again from scratch. Often this worked, enough of the key engineers in his design team being willing to move with him.

After CDC, he founded Cray Research which produced the renowned CRAY-1 supercomputer, using early small-scale integrated circuit technology, housed in a distinctive and iconic circular case with seating for tired engineers! Like all good designs, this was dictated by the engineering need of reducing the length of wires between modules to increase the speed.

Subsequent generations were less successful. Steve Chen did manage to develop a multi-processor version, the CRAY X-MP, based on the CRAY-1 design, but this was not Cray's style. He preferred to begin with a clean sheet of paper for a new design, using the most appropriate technology available at the time.

At Cray Computer Corporation in Colorado, Cray worked on the CRAY-3 which was never successfully marketed due to inordinate delays until funding finally ran out. A perennial problem was the dissipation of heat, especially in designs using 3-dimensional configurations of components where the problem was often insurmountable. The CRAY-3 included modules containing about a thousand chips in the space of 4 cubic inches.

In early 1996, Cray founded his last company, SRC Computers (short for Seymour Roger Cray). A parallel 512 microprocessor 1 trillion floating point operations per second computer (12,000 times the speed of a CRAY-1) was planned. Unfortunately Cray suffered a fatal car accident on 22 September 1996, bringing the end of a era of supercomputer design. The future of supercomputing has to be increasing parallelization due to the physical limitations of sequential machines, and Cray recognized this. But that will be left to younger generations of engineers.

The book tracks Cray's succession of triumphs and disappointments, and other related supercomputer developments to a lesser degree, maintaining if not increasing the reader's interest throughout. It makes inspirational reading for any computer engineer, and gives an insight into the excitement possible in computing for those less well acquainted or enamoured with the subject. The technical aspects are not overwhelming; as the title suggests, this is essentially a book about people and their interactions.

Cray was a great inspirer and instigator of designs, but relied on his colleagues to follow through his ideas to completion. He could be unforgiving of those who made mistakes or slow progress, but was very protective of colleagues whom he valued. At one point he even worked for the minimum wage of $1.25 per hour to avoid any of his design team being laid off.

When working on a problem, he required long periods of silence for concentration, a demand that his co-workers learned to respect. He could lay down and normally obtain his requirements because of his huge ability and reputation. As Fortune magazine said of Cray in April 1966, "there is no doubt that, in a field where genius is almost taken for granted, he is a towering figure." This book is a fitting tribute to the genius of Cray and all his colleagues over the years.

For further information on Seymour Cray and the history of computing in general, see the on-line Virtual Museum of Computing, including the Pioneers of Computing, under:

Note: The text above is as originally submitted to the Times Higher Education Supplement, and has been copy edited in the final published version. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes if full acknowledgement to the author and publisher are given.