From: eugene@marcy.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.sys.super Subject: [l/m 3/31/99] What *IS* a super? comp.par/comp.sys.super (18/28) FAQ Followup-To: poster Date: 18 Jul 1999 12:03:01 GMT Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Approved: eugene@george.arc.nasa.gov Distribution: world Message-Id: <7msfpl$gm1$1@sun500.nas.nasa.gov> Reply-To: eugene@george.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Xref: ukc comp.parallel:15726 comp.sys.super:10302 Archive-Name: superpar-faq Last-modified: 31 Mar 1999 18 Supercomputing and Crayisms 20 IBM and Amdahl 22 Grand challenges and HPCC 24 Suggested (required) readings 26 Dead computer architecture society 28 Dedications 2 Introduction and Table of Contents and justification 4 Comp.parallel news group history 6 parlib 8 comp.parallel group dynamics 10 Related news groups, archives and references 12 14 16 Not heard in these parts: This computer is good for {select one: 51%, 90% 99%} of your needs. What's constitutes a supercomputer? ----------------------------------- What makes a supercomputer? =========================== The fastest, most powerful machine to solve a problem today. Generally credited to Dr. Sid Fernbach, George Michael and and Jack Worlton, and others. What if I qualify that with "cost?" ["for the cheapest"] -------------------------------------------------------- Then, it's not a supercomputer. Period. It might be a minisupercomputer, though. Don't let George know that I said that (he's much more hardline). Where? ------ Most likely on an AEC viewgraph in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The earliest published reference I have in my biblio is: %A T. C. Chen %T Unconventional Superspeed Computer Systems %J Proceedings AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference %D 1971 %P 365-371 %K btartar Parallel systems were also under construction at the time. What was the first supercomputer? --------------------------------- Probably the most credit goes to the Cray-1. Cray himself never used the term, but clearly the CDC 7600 and the CDC 6600 are given definite credit (also Cray designs). The IBM STRETCH and other 7xxx machines were certainly among the most powerful computers before then, but it is important to remember that were few computers in those days. Restated: all computers were "super" in those days. Other answers ------------- 0) A Japanese company. ;-) 1) "My definition is 'best,' "A Supercomputer is the one that runs your problem(s) the fastest."" 2) "A supercomputer is a device for converting a CPU-bound problem into an I/O bound problem." [Ken Batcher] 3) "A supercomputer is one that is only one generation behind what you really need." Neil Lincoln's definition. 3a) "Hardware above and beyond, software behind and below" 3b) A machine to solve yesterday's problems at today's speeds. 4) Page _one_ of the Linpack-report... What is Linpack? (LINPACK) ---------------- Linpack100x100 - All Fortran, dominated by daxpy unless advanced compiler optimizations are available. Seldom quoted in marketing literature because the performance is much lower than the following two. However, Dongarra sorts his chart by machine performance on this benchmark. Linpack1000x1000 - Typically Vendor Library routines which use BLAS3 or LAPACK routines (N**2 data refs for N**3 operations) Shows single processors with high floating point capacity in favorable light, so often quoted in marketing literature. Linpack NxN - problem size determined by Vendor, good for parallel machines since with correct choice of problem size can maximize the computation per communication step. Often quoted in marketing literature for the larger parallel systems. "A supercomputer is a machine which costs between $7M and $20M. [~1984 prices]. [Today, I guess you could change the range to $10M-$30M or so (how much is a full-up T-90 go for at the usual discount?] For some strange and mysterious reason, this really used to bug people who wanted to believe that "supercomputers" had a kind of magical, mystical aura. For some reason, the same folks would get mad when, by the numbers, their PC's were about ~1/1,000,000 of the then-current Cray & CDC - they also wanted to "believe in" their PCs. My puzzlement over this double denial is probably why I am not a successful politician. --Hugh LeMaster See also Grand Challenges panel. ---------------------- Where do the terms minisupercomputer and Crayette come from? ============================================================ Convex Computer Corp. coined the term minisupercomputer and that has largely stuck even though they consider themselves now a full fledged super computer company. "Crayette" came from Datamation for SCS, because SCS had an Cray/COS object code compatible X-MP machine at a fraction of the cost/performance. Crayisms ======== The news group has covered a variety of Crayisms or sayings (some are apoc.*ful). %A Russell Mitchell %T The Genius: Meet Seymour Cray, Father of the Supercomputer %J Business Week %N 3157 %D April 30, 1990 %P 80-86 %K Cover story, biography, circular slide rule, Cray-3, %X Text of this article is available via Dialog(R) from McGraw-Hill 0210276 Some of these are Rollwagon-isms. On Schedules and bureaucracy: "Five Year Goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One Year Goal: Achieve one-fifth of the above." On 2s-complement arithmetic. 'Although many "Seymour stories" are based in fact, most are wildy exaggerated:' On digging holes (tunnels): a 12-foot hole for wind surfing gear. On burning boats (Rollwagen: made up the party and Carolyn Cray Bain: "it was the easiest way to get rid of a boat"). Virtual Memory (compared with sex). "Memory is like an orgasm - it's better when you don't have to fake it." "You can't fake what you don't have". "Can't use what you ain't got!" "In this business, you can't fake what you don't have" [Gee, I guess this quote makes this FAQ R-rated.] Scene: 1979 Cray Research, Inc. Annual Meeting Lutherin Brotherhood Building, Minneapolis, Mn. Q & A period, after the address by the Officers of the Company, Q: "Mr. Cray, ... Since you seem to have implemented almost all of the current schemes published in the scientific press on improving performance in your systems, I was wondering why you didn't also provide for virtual memeory?" A: From Mr. Cray: "Well as you know, over the years I have provided the largest physical memories available for use. The addition of a "virtual memory" scheme would have added another level of hardware and hardware addressing delays in accessing code and data. I believe that it's better to spend the resource providing for a larger overall memory system for the programmer. ... Historically, this is what the programmers have preferred." On wood paneling. I hear Seymour Cray designs machines on his Apple MacIntosh. And that Apple designs MacIntoshes on their Cray. %A Marcelo A. Gumucio %T CRI Corporate Report %J Cray User Group 1988 Spring Proceedings %C Minneapolis, MN %D 1988 %P 23-28 %K 21st Meeting %X Seymour has 6 Apple Macs (Macintosh) used to design Crays (not just one). Q&A section. [Gordon Bell {See the IBM panel} admits he designs his computers on Macs, too.] Alas, this is getting old. Seymour died. Apple is only using their EL as a file server. We have also covered the parity quote (panel 10). 1) Mr. Cray had always worked with core (yes Virginia, little ferrite toruses with wires hand threaded through them). Core memory was rock stable & almost *never* failed. My RCA 70/45 crashed 3 times in 4 years with memory parity errors and one of those crashes was due to a friend hitting the A/C Power Emercency Off button on the console! 2) When he designed the first Cray-1, s/n-1, Mr. Cray used RAM chips with straight parity. The system was installed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It averaged 20 minutes of blinding speed per system failure (due to a parity error in memory). This was obviously a problem, so, after consulting with the LANL folks ... 3) Development was halted on s/n-2. The next machine, s/n-3, was designed with Single Error Correction - Double Error Detection (SECDED) parity in it's 1 MW memory. This machine was sold to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) where it ran (with very few double-bit error crashes) for many years. An aside here is that NCAR had the absolute audacity to require that an Operating System come with the system, so Cray hired a (shudder) programmer to write one! 4) Note that this is memory! The Cray-1 line had SECDED memory. No parity checking was done in the CPU. The same was done for the X-MP. The Y-MP extended parity checking to the CPU. ... Cray and new ideas (non-cray) ----------------------------- The story frequently goes: A bright student or architect somehow manages to get time to visit Seymour. Cray will listen to that student's ideas and nod understanding or disagreement. He listens to a few ideas, but he makes a comment like "Sounds good." But that does NOT mean that Seymour will take the idea and place it into His architectures. Too many people with improvements attempt (fewer these days) to suggest improvements where Seymour is thinking: If your idea is so good, why don't YOU run with it? Leave my ideas (and his infrastructure) to me. Seymour is an expert on cooling and refrigeration technology. See the Cray bio "The Supermen" by Charles Murray (Wiley, 1997). Seymour Comparisons ------------------- Typical comparisons Edwin Land, Polaroid, 2nd largest number of patents Kelly Johnson, Lockheed Skunk Works (KISS principle), F-104, U-2, SR-71 Immersion cooling ----------------- A survey article by Saul Rosen in the first issue of _ACM Computing Surveys_ mentioned that the original core memory on the IBM-7090 (1958?) was oil-cooled, although it was quickly replaced by an air cooled version. As the 7090 used much of the memory technology from the 7030 Stretch, does this mean that the Stretch memory was oil-cooled? The IBM7030, 7090, 1401(early models) all had memories cooled by immersion in oil. The same is true for the Harvest - ask Norm Hardy about this. The SAGE machine produced by IBM was the (FS) Q32. It was water cooled. I remember seeing this machine at SDC in Santa Monica. Note: from the Cray-2 (immersion) to the Y-MP (chilled) on, CRI machines have been cooled by Fluorinert (tm) [a 3M product]. Prior that that they were chilled using Freon. The C-3 (CCC machine) was also immersion cooled. Use of chilled water: many machines (e.g., IBM, CRI, the Japanese machines) use chilled water for heat transfer. Not immersed. Added note (ex-DEC) Chevron International Oil Co. (product taken over by Exxon) COOLANOL(tm) a silicate ester for dielectric heat transfer for electronic equipment "The future is seldom the same as the past" - Seymour Cray, 6/4/95. Many people claim to have a Cray-1 (on a chip, on a board, for 1/100 the price, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- etc.). What does this mean? ---------------------------- Almost nothing. The Cray-1 is an early circa 1970s: A distinguished machine for its time, but you might also consider comparing the ENIAC. (in fact Alan Perlis in his Epigrams did: "Just think with VLSI we can have 100 Eniacs on a chip.") http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~museum/sim.html The Cray-1's lessons include vector registers and instructions, the importance of fast, simple scalar processing (frequently forgotten). Considering an element-wise break down of the basic features meant: Processor speed, memory size, I/O bandwidth: 12.5 ns clock cycle (a few machines have this). Most instructions executed in one cycle (contributing to RISC ideas). about 1 or less Megaword or memory, that's about 8 MBs (the amount of memory in my Apple PowerBook[tm]). Yep, Cray-1 performance. This capacity over-simplifies the architecture's multibanked memory. fast I/O: 13.3 MB/S I/O point-to-point wiring, disk striping (IOS required), etc. features not usually found on micros. The original Cray-1 cost $8.6M; sold for $8.8M to NCAR. This is all a gross generalization/simplification. Don't compare modern machines to obsolete machines; if you do that, then compare against the ENIAC like Alan Perlis did (next section). How do I get a (used) Cray-1? ============================= Ask Tony Cole. He sells boards (about $150). www.MemoryBilia.com Sorry, no chassie or frame, but you can also buy framed boards at the National Atomic Museum at Kirtland AFB, ABQ, NM. http://www.sandia.gov/AtomMus/AtomMus.htm http://chili.rt66.com/cyspacemalls/atomic/about.html $55 at last look. It is possible that these boards are export controlled. While they last. What was the Serial Number of Loadstone? ======================================== You tell me. Probably low. What were the serial numbers of Carillon? Or Tractor or Harvest or your Stretch? Where can I see a Cray-1? ========================= S/N 1 NCAR? originally LANL S/N ? Norris Bradbury Museum (Los Alamos, NM) # may no longer be visible S/N 6 The Computer Museum (Moffett Field) originally LLNL, actually a 1A S/N ? The Computer Museum (Moffett Field) originally LLNL? T. Cole Sitting next to Bldg. 126 in the parking lot (tarp) # If you are an Ames employee, Please DON'T go stealing the seats. S/N ? The Computer Museum (Boston) actually a Cray-1/M Also S/N 1 CDC 7600 S/N ? The middle of Len Shustek's vinyard S/N ? National Cryptologic Museum (Ft. Meade) actually a Cray-1/M/X-MP S/N ? on display at MN Supercomputer Ctr -- no idea about this machine other than that the U of MN owned it and MN Supercomputer Ctr got its start as a "private" company through its operations. Write to Liz Stadther (lss@msc.edu) for more details For European viewers, there's a Cray-1 in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. others? (with time) Where can I see a Cray-2? ------------------------- S/N 2000 The Computer Museum (Moffett Field) originally LLNL T. Cole Falcon AFB (lobby) SGI UK HQ at Theale UK (June 98) # Blue chassis entrance hallway Where can I see a Cray-3? ------------------------- NCAR? Classified. (Best not broadcasted) The Computer Museum (pieces) Microsoft (pieces) What is the time line for ------------------------- ERA (Engineering Research Associates) Univac -----> Unisys CDC (Control Data Corporation) -----> CDS/SGI | -----> ETA (Engineering Technology Associates) Cray Research Inc. | Acquires (alphabetic not chronological): | Celerity | Floating Point Systems | Supertek Supercomputer Systems Inc. (SSI [1 of 2]) [S. Chen] Chen Systems (Pentium based servers) -----> Sequent acqs. Cray Computer Corp. assets liquidated March 24, 1995 To Our Employees: I am sorry to tell you our company has run out of money. We have nearly run out of money so many times before that it is shocking now that it has really happened. We have been trying to raise 20 million dollars to carry the company through the rest of the year and bring the Cray-4 to the marketplace. I believe we chose the best opportunity to raise that money, but it has not been successful. We must therefore close our operation and deal with the debts which we owe. I am very disappointed, as I am sure you are. We have spent six years of our lives developing a technology which seemed like an important contribution to science. To not complete such a long effort is very disheartening. I have asked myself if there were mistakes made, which if done differently, would have allowed us to complete the project. I do not believe so. I think the goals were right, and I think we did the very best we could to accomplish those goals. Our problem is basically one of timing. The business world, and our government, are in a cost cutting mode. They do not wish to take any risks at the moment. Long term investment for the future is not popular. Many people think there are already too many computers. In a different decade we would probably have succeeded. So in the sense that we did our best I cannot feel bad. I have enjoyed working with each of you and will miss this relationship very much. Somehow we each have to go home and think about how we get on with the rest of our lives. I am sure this will not be easy for any of us. I wish you each well, and thank you for being a part of my life for the years we have had together. (signed) Seymour Cray forms firm for computer designs Colorado Springs, Colorado -- Cray Research Inc. and Seymour Cray, the founder of Cray Computer, have formed a company, SRC Computers Inc., that will work with a small team on computer designs. While the company has not received funding and has notrevealed the type of markets it will pursue, former Cray Computer chief operating officer Terry Willkom has joined Seymour Cray and three other employees in the venture. August 5, 1996, Electronic Engineering Times What's "better" 'long-vector' or 'short-vector?' ------------------------------------------------ Are vector register computers parallel computers? ================================================ This is an older question from net.arch/comp.arch. It depends on whether you believe pipelining is a form of "temporal parallelism." 'Long-vector' machines: TI ASC, CDC 203/205, ETA-10[EGQP] 'Short-vector' machines: Cray, Convex, Alliant, Weitek based chip set IBM 3090 A highly application dependent question. I theorized (guessed) in the late 1980s that short vector machines succeeded because as algorithms transitioned from 2-D code to 3-D codes, the additional dimension took up the memory organization rather than the lengthing of any single dimension. This is clearly a gross generalization, because many communities did retain the use of long-vectors. See also other key words: "strip mining." How to read model and serial numbers on ... ----------------------------------------------------------- How to phrase the question..... Once upon a time, life was simple.... No. A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away .... No. In the beginning Seymour built the 1604. We just jump in mid-stream. Small islands of logic exist in a seas of chaos. Distinction 1: There are two types of numbers a) Model numbers which MIGHT tell you something about the configuration of the machine. These numbers are largely nominal, but sometimes they have order (ordinal) Interpreted carefully, it is possible to make inferences about a model/machine. Distinction 2: b) Serial numbers, or production numbers. Supercomputers appear impressive because they have fairly small production numbers due to their expense. S/N #1 Cray-1 sounds impressive. Interpreted carefully, it is possible to make inferences about a machine. The ERA 1604 was the sum of the Univac 1101 and the street address of the building housing ERA..... [Murray] The blame is not ERAs, nor Cray's, nor Univac's nor IBM's [1401, 7090, 709, 360/370/303x/40x1/3090//x/400...] CDC 6600: how many produced? Where delivered? CDC 7600: how many produced? Where delivered? Cray-1s model numbers for the most part only had improved variants designated using letters (, A, S, M, and so forth). Later a 4-decimal digit scheme saying something about I/O configuration, etc. was introduced. Cray-1 serial numbers were simple: serial. Sequential. Tallying. 1, 2, 3, 4, ... More or less as they came off the floor. E.g.: Cray-1S/2300. 1. Serial number X/MPs Cray-X/MPs were a different type of machine. The fact that they were multiprocessors, and that processors were expensive necessitated the specification of the number of processors as a means of characterizing their configuration. The first X-MPs were 2 processor machines, and they initially had 2 MWs of memory. Exercise. Later these scaled to a maximum of 8 MW addressable memory and 4 CPUs: so what's the designation? 126 machines produced? The 4-digit scheme characterizing I/O channel, etc. was occasionally used, but fell into non-use. People concentrated on the "sexiness" of fast CPUs by this time. This is one reason why on particular old documents you will see 6 and more digit numbers. X-MP serial numbers were 300s, 3xx. This became 4nn and 5nn later in the production cycle. Cray-2s complicated the problem. They were not instruction set compatable, something which is almost inconceivable in this day. Initially, Cray-2 were doing to be designed in one model and one model only: 4 processors and 256 MW of memory. Later, a small number of variants occured: 2 and 8 processors, 128 MW and 512 MW, Dynamic RAM (DRAM) and Static RAM (SRAM). Cray-2 serial numbers as they left the factory floor were 2000 serials. 2. Binary compatablity Cray-Y/MPs, which came next, were similar to X/MPs. Y/MPs form the basis of several families execution compatible : C-90s, T-90s, ELs, etc. Binary compatablity extended back one generation only. You could not run X/MP binaries on a C90. The J90 counted like a YMP. There were XMP cross compilation libraries for use on the YMP so that you could compile X/MP programs on a YMP. So the execution compatability across the range looks like C1 --> XMP --> YMP --> C90 --> T90 | | V V XMS --> ELs --> J90 & J90se * * C2 T3d T3e For binary compatability you can go across one arrow and/or down one arrow only. (Note ** ) An mpp emulator was available for ELs to develop mpp codes while waiting for the T3 product line to arrive. The emulator managed about 4 mpp nodes but used the native CRI arithmatic. Later T90 cpus used IEEE aritmatic which would not support C90 native codes. The first Y-MP models were 832 machines: 8 CPUs and 32 MW of memory. We quickly start to lose positional logic and you have to keep a sense of where the CPU/memory dividing is. 8128s were the next ceiling the first being [S/N 1030]. Y-MP serial numbers started in 1000s. J90 machines are 9xxx. ELs are 5xxx. T3D/T3Es are 6xxx EPCC T3D is sn6001 T3E-1200 is sn6906 T3E is sn6710 ETA Systems and other followed in similar numbering ways. Cray T-3[D/E] configurations are ... List of ETA-10 sites -------------------- We do not have serial numbers for installations. cycle time(E) > cycle time(G) E = EOS S = SV LN2 sites (alphabetic) Config .............................................. DWD ETA10-E4128E Deu. Weather DWD ETA10-G4128E FSU ETA10-E4128S FSU ETA10-G4128S JvNC ETA10-E4128E JvNC ETA10-E8256E JvNC ETA10-G8256E MnSC ETA10-E4128S TIT ETA10-E8256S UK Met. ETA10-E4064E U. Aachen ETA10-G6128E Count 11, Murray: 7, possible resales. Air cooled sites Config. ....................................... Acad. Sinica, TW ETA10-P108S Aerosp. Det., Fr. ETA10-Q116S Aust. Met. ETA10-P108E Canadian AES ETA10-P108S CDAB-SKI, Sw. ETA10-P108S CERFACS, Fr. ETA10-P108E CIRA, It. ETA10-P116S Classified ETA10-Q232S ENR, NL ETA10-P232E FEL-TNO ETA10-P108S Ford ETA10-Q108S FSU ETA10-Q132E Houtex/PGI ETA10-P108S Meiji U. ETA10-P108S MUMM, Belg. ETA10-P108S N-ARC ETA10-Q164S N-GSFC ETA10-P108E N-JSC ETA10-P108S Pulsonic, Alb., Ca. ETA10-P108S Purdue ETA10-P108S Technion U. ETA10-P108S Total CFP ETA10-P108S TRW ETA10-P108S U. Cologne ETA10-P108S U. GA ETA10-P108E U. GA ETA10-Q216E [upgrade] U. W. Ont. ETA10-P108P Veritas, Alb., Ca. ETA10-P108S Count 28, Murray: 27. Double counting the upgrade. The spooks asked for and got an instruction to do "population counts" --------------------------------------------------------------------- (the number of bits per word). ============================== This is a common note/story. You tell us. 8^) "At one point, I was told this instruction was added to the 6600 at the request of Los Alamos." 3. bmm Also Bit matrix multply functional units available as an option on C90 and T90 cpus. Ref: %A J. E. Thornton %T Design of a Computer: The CDC 6600 %I Scott, Foresman & Co. %C Glenview, IL %D 1970 %K recommended, RISC inspiration, %K btartar, book, text, %X The 6600 has influenced a lot of the supercomputers from Cray and CDC. Also no commercial manufacturer of such an outstanding machine has ever revealed so much detail. Amos Omondi %X Population count: pages 101 and 105, Figure 67 (cascading adds). The last annotation came from Gordon Bell's copy. Gordon Bell memorializes Seymour: http://www.research.microsoft.com/barc/gbell/craytalk/index.htm Cray's five Ps: --------------- five Ps: packaging, plumbing (bits and heat flow), parallelism, programming, and understanding the problems or applications. Why .h files? ============= The name space. It is important to establish a foothold in the name space. The collision problem is becoming worse. A company with a name like Cray (say) publishes *.h files in the public domain using #defines on certain 8 character sequences. A few non-Cray software designers in writing tools use #ifdef CRAYs to inflate their egos (it happens), learn bug reports from people using real Crays, meanwhile the name space develops some interesting collisions. Then more software tools appear on your architectures, some of which aren't bad tools. Keep your tools proprietary, tool development takes longer. It works, you are reading this on the Usenet, right? This is why letting the world know your source code is important. "If it isn't source, it isn't software." --Dave Tweten "Datamation" What's "class 6?" (class VI) ============================ The US Dept. of Energy developed a scale of ranking their supercomputer purchases. If someone tells you, "XXX is a class 7 machine" or a class 8 or higher number machine: they don't know what they are talking about. If you think I am trolling, you are right. I want someone to PROVE to me that a DOE Class VII designation really exists (i.e., not merely mentioned by someone in a paper). Ref: %A Sidney Fernbach, ed. %T Supercomputers, Class VI Systems, Hardware and Software %I North-Holland %C Amsterdam %D 1986 %O ISBN 0-444-87981 1 %K book, text, cray, cdc cyber, data flow, NEC SX-2, Fujitsu VP-200, Hitachi 810/20, vector processing, %X A collection of papers surveying existing computer architectures rather than newer proposed supercomputer architectures. %X A book from one of the men who set up the "Class system" of the DOE. What's my VAX/IBM PC on these scales? ===================================== "Class 1/2." -- Sid Fernbach. No, in simple terms, they don't rate to be placed on the scale. It is normalized for the specific time period asked. "These aren't real computers; they are marijuana." -- George Michael But this is silly, the PC is more powerful than the Eniac. ---------------------------------------------------------- So build a time machine and send a VAX/PC back in time, and you will have the most powerful computer in 1946. What is the influence of the CDC 6600 and Seymour Cray on RISC Architectures? ============================================================================= The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components of a computer are those that aren't there. --Gordon Bell "Really Invented by Seymour Cray" Cray is widely credited as influencing (inspiring) Hennessy, Patterson, Cocke, their initial designs. The issue is not simply one of raw performance. The issues involve design development time and reaching market. Current best first reference: %A David A. Patterson %T Reduced Instruction Set Computers %J Communications of the ACM %V 28 %N 1 %D January 1985 %P 8-21 %K trade/popular/business press, industry references, RISC, %X While not a parallel computer, important for processor design. %X From the text: {old arguments for CISCs} 1. Richer instruction sets would simplify compilers. 2. Richer instruction sets would alleviate the software crisis. 2. Richer instruction sets would improve architectural quality. Memory efficiency was such a dominating concern.... ... 70s design principles: 1. The memory technology used for microprograms was growing rapidly, so large microprograms would add little or nothing to the cost of the machine. 2. Since microinstructions were much faster than normal machine instructions, moving software functions to microcode made for faster computers and more reliable functions. 3. Since execution speed was proportional to program size, architectural techniques that led to smaller prorgams also led to faster computers. 4. Registers were old fashioned, and made it hard to build compilers; stacks or memory-to-memory architectures were superior execution models. As one architecture researcher put it in 1978, "One's eyebrows should rise whenever a future architecture is developed with a register-oriented instruction set." Footnote: Footnote: Myers, G. J. The case against stack-oriented instruction sets. Comput. Archit. News, 6, 3 (Aug. 1977), 7-10. %X * Semiconductor memory was replacing core, ... * Since it was virtually impossible to remove all mistakes for 400,000 bits of microcode, control store ROMs were becoming control store RAMs * Caches has been invented -- ... * Compilers were subsetting architectures -- ... %X WRITEABLE CONTROL STORE 1. Virtual memory complications. 2. Limited address space. 3. Swapping in a multiprocess environment. %X THE ORIGINS OF RISC 1. Functions should be kept simple unless there was a very good reason to do otherwise. 2. Microinstructions should not be faster than simple instructions. 3. Microcode is not magic. 4. Simple decoding and pipelined execution are more important than program size. 5. Compiler technology should be used to simplify instructions rather than to generate complex instructions. %X COMMON RISC TRAITS 1. Operations are register-to-register, with only LOAD and STORE accessing memory. 2. The operations and addressing modes are reduced. 3. Instruction formats are simple and do not cross word boundaries. 4. RISC branches avoid pipeline penalities. %X RISC VARIATIONS Compiler Technology versis Register Windows Photos: IBM 801, UC Berkeley RISC II, and Stanford MIPS. Delayed Loads and Multiple Memory and Register Ports Pipelines Multiple Instructions per Word %X ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE All RISC machines borrowed good ideas from old machines, and we hereby pay our respects to a long line of architectural ancestors. In 1946, before the first digital computer was operational, von Neumann wrote The really decisive considerations from the present point of view, the simplicity of the equipment demanded by the code, and the clarity of its application to the actually important problems together with the speed of its handling of those problems. For the last 25 years Seymour Cray has been quietly designing register-based computers that rely on LOADs and STOREs while using pipelined execution. James Thornton, one of his colleagues on the CDC-6600, wrote in 1963 The simplicity of all instructions allows quick and simple evaluation of status to begin execution.... Adding complication to a special operation, therefore, degrades all the others. and also In my mind, the greatest potential for improvement is with the internal methods. . .at the risk of loss of fringe operations. The work to be done is really engineering work, pure X and simple. As a matter of fact, that's what the results should be -- pure and simple. footnote: Thornton, J.E. Considerations in Computer Design -- Leading Up to the Control Data 6600. Control Data Chippewa Laboratory, 1963. %X Its not that Cocke wasn't doing this, its just that if you look at the instructions sets historically, Cray was doing a lot of the things that were later found in RISCs. %X I heard later that CDC inspired one of the early IBM projects that eventually to RISCs and then Superscalar, so there might be some other link there Dave My guiding principle was simplicity. I think there is an expression for that. Don't put anything in that isn't necessary. Whereas many other places at that point in time and for several years after that were adding all the bells and whistles that could be imagined. Later on much more recently there came the term "RISC" which says "back to the basics", make it as simple as you can. I thought I was a RISC person all the time even though I didn't know the name. --Seymour Cray The early RISC pioneers were not without their critics. One of the most prominent critics is Nick Tredennick, whose work on the microcoded 68000 and IBM S/370 NMOS experimental chip is in stark contrast to RISC philosophy. Tredennick's has argued that the benefits of RISC design are illusionary and whatever advantages RISCs enjoy are attributable to 1) newer designs carry less compatibility baggage, and 2) RISC processors tend to enjoy higher bandwidth to memory than comparable CISC designs. %A J. E. Thornton %T Design of a Computer: The CDC 6600 %I Scott, Foresman & Co. %C Glenview, IL %D 1970 %K recommended, %K btartar %X The 6600 has influenced a lot of the supercomputers from Cray and CDC. Also no commercial manufacturer of such an outstanding machine has ever revealed so much detail. Amos Omondi %X Population count: pages 101 and 105, Figure 67 (cascading adds). # this is a redundant reference on ths panel. Look up references on the IBM 801, SOAR, MIPS. "We need more bodies," said West ... ...around this time videotape was circulating in the basement, and it suggested another approach. In the movie, an engineer named Seymour Cray described how is little company, located in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, had come to build what are generally acknowledged to be the fastest computers in the world, the quintessential number-crunchers. Cray was a legend in computers, and in the movie Cray said that he liked to hire inexperienced engineers right out of school, because they do not usually know what's supposed to be impossible. West liked that idea. "Shall we hire kids,...?" said West. Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, 1981 Some modern computers, most notably the machines of Seymour Cray, remain hardwired, they respond directly to the electrical equivalent of assembly language. Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, 1981 How many instructions were in the CDC instruction set? ====================================================== Ask Horst Simon 8^). What constitutes 'balance?' =========================== An interesting vague question. A useful analogy comes from the icon of the Salishan Conference (remember that from another panel?): ^ A s / \ r m / \ c h / \ h t / \ i i / \ t r / \ e o / \ c g / \ t l / \ u A / \ r <_____________________> e Language I might take issue with aspects of this model, but it's more useful to consider other ideas based on it: ^ /.\ e / . \ S r / . \ o a / . \ f w / . \ t d / . \ w r / . \ a a / . . \ r H / . . \ e / . . \ <_____________________> Algorithms ^ /.\ / . \ e / . O\ S / . p\ r /n .C e\ o /o C.o r\ a /i .m a\ f /t P.p t\ w /a .i i\ t /c U.l n\ d /i .e g\ w /n .r \ r /u . S\ a /m y.L y\ a /m r. N .i s\ r /o o. a o .b t\ H /C m. t t .r e\ e / e. a a .a m\ / M. D t .r \ / . D a t a i . \ <_________________________________________> A p p l i c a t i o n ^ /.\ / . \ e / . \ S / . \ r /n . \ o /o C. \ a /i .O L\ f /t P. i\ w /a .S b\ t /c U. r\ d /i . a\ w /n . r\ r /u . i\ a /m y.C e\ a /m r. A .o s\ r /o o. a l .m \ H /C m. t g .p \ e / e. a o .i \ / M. D r .l \ / . N o t a t i o n i .r\ <_________________________________________> A p p l i c a t i o n I prefer the reduction. George has gone three-dimensional. I have a 3-D model (since I used to work with sheet metal). Where are the supercomputers? ============================= Two separate lists are compiled. Their existence is periodically posted. The reader must realize the competitive and secretive nature of some of this market, politics, and commerce. All such lists must be regarded with some suspicion. Manufacturers have their ax (keep customers), users (like big industrial or government concerns) have their ax, etc. Any list is suspect. Lists like these and announcements could also be used for disinformation. See "Why is this group so quiet?" So don't expect reliable stats without first signing a non-disclosure agreement. www.skyweb.net/~gunter (Gunder Ahrendt) gunter@skyweb.net Then there is the "German" list aka TOP500 list. http://parallel.rz.uni-mannheim.de/top500/top500.html I would be willing to make my WWW list of supercomputing and parallel sites into an official comp.parallel/ comp.sys.super page, still maintained by me. Currently, on a slow week, this page gets about 600-1000 accesses. IEEE URL: http://computer.org/parascope/ WWW List of Parallel & Supercomputing Sites and Vendors ------------------------------------------------------- http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~dbader/sites.html This WWW page is updated regularly and features links to World-Wide Parallel & Supercomputing *-* Research Sites (Academic, Government, and International) *-* Vendors *-* Related supercomputing information There is a quick-index to the Sites, as well as a reverse-chronological listing of new updates. The Cray-2 was a Failure wasn't it? =================================== That depends with whom you are speaking. It was enough to wipe out ETA Systems. Important advances: 1) Pushed "big memories." The first Cray-2 had more physical memory on it at the time than all previous Cray architectures combined. 2) First supercomputer to run Unix(tm). Won the Unix wars. Wiped out non-competiting OSes and spawned a slew of minisupercomputers. Technology pushes: Dropping B- and T-registers for a 16 KW "local" memory not quite a cache. Seymour didn't know how to use caches properly? (later B- & T-regs readded back in Cray-4, LM removed) Chaining. Scatter-gather. New Fortran (cft77) compiler written in Pascal. Disadvantages: Single CPU to memory data paths. Two cycles per instruction. Intended to use GaAs (pushed to Cray-3). Slower memory. List of known Cray-2 sites (most decommissioned) -------------------------- about 2 dozen External CRI: SN First Config Notes 2000 LLNL 1 CPU, 64 MW DRAM # red skin (now @ TCM) later MSC 2001 LLNL 4 CPU, 64 MW DRAM # red skin later MSC 2002 Ames 4 CPU, 256 MW DRAM # technically the first real one # blue skin 2003 MnSc->CRI-> MIT 4 CPU, 256 MW DRAM # maroon and gold 2004? classified 4 CPU, 256 MW # red skin 2005? ARL (BRL) 4 CPU, 256-MW DRAM # Mike Muuss' machine? 2006 U. of Stuttgart 4 CPU, 256 MW # yellow and black 20xx? classified 4 CPU, 256 MW # red skin? 2011 CRI 4 CPU, 256 MW SRAM # ?? internal use 2012 AFWL 4 CPU, 256 MW SRAM # rainbow skins (5 colors max) # last of the columns, in comes the waterfall 2013 Ames 4 CPU, 256 MW SRAM # blue skin 2020 NCSA (UIUC) 1988-95 4 CPU, 256 MW # blue skin 2021 MnSC -99 4 CPU, 512 MW (1/3) # blue/black? skin 2025 CCC # 2028 ?? # ? 20?? SGI UK HQ at Theale UK (June 98) # Blue chassis entrance hallway 2029 Eli Lilly # ? 2101 CCC 8-CPUs (The last one) -> NERSC? # Red and black NERSC # only 8 cpu (at TCMHC, Moffett Field) NASA/Langley 4 CPU, 128-MW Static ram MN Supercomputer Ctr # 4 cpu and 512 MW 2 - Falcon AFB (one in lobby, one crated up) 1 Japan NERSC # 4 cpu, back to CCC/CRI What was the physicaly smallest Cray machine? The EL92 was a repackaged version of the air cooled EL range that measured approx 1.2m High by 0.6m wide by 0.6m deep and could run from a normal power outlet. Whilst not at big commercial success, it was a bit late to market, it was wildy used at trade shows and as loan equipment. Available in 2 and 4 cpu versions with 512Mb memory it was truly a deskside Cray. Good write up and pictorial in "Advanced systems" magazine July 1994. # actually, this is not quite true. --enm What was the physicaly largest Cray machine? The 16 cpu version of the C90 was a truly big machine standing at 2.5M tall and cpus just fitting in a 4m diameter circle together with the power and cooling equipment the whole system weighed in at approx 12 (?) tonnes. There was one (or more?) system delivered that consisted of four interconnected 16 cpu C90s. Where is the Cray-1 list? What models? ========================= Where is the Cray-X-MP list? ------------------------- Where is the Cray-Y-MP list? ------------------------- The original ... say something here..... SN414 (red and black) http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/park/abm64/t3e880.html How many were built? -------------------- By PC and mainframes standards: not many. Dozens. I think the X barely exceeded 100. If not the X, then certainly the Y. X-MPs were serial numbered in the 300s. 126 produced? Models ------ Original 1s, 1As, 1Ses, 1Ms (later renumbered as X-MP/1s). We had a post at one time which detailed differences. I am a post 1S baby, someone else has to detail the minutae. For instance, I think Ames' first Cray was a Cray-1S/1300S. The 3 was the number of I/O controllers, I think. So if you know, you can elaborate here: 1: 1A: 1S: bipolar static RAMs? 1M: These had CMOS memories, hence the M. All limited to 8 MW addressing. Higher addresses only came to Y-MPs. X-MPs started the number of CPUs amount of memory numbering. The first X-MP was a 22: 2 CPUs and 2 MW of memory (COS). This was the first CRI multiprocessor. The 1S-1300 precursor was S/N 38. We had two X-MPs. The second being 313, so I have to deduce that the other The 22 was upgrade to a 48. Reader exercise. So did the S/N change? Got me. This was all in the era before machine naming. Most people used configuration naming (22 vs. 12 vs. 48) or like LLNL and LANL, A, B, C. Not many sites had multiple Crays. It is much harder to maintain a list of Cray-1 derived machines, because 1) there were many more of them (models and ), 2) they were frequently resold, 3) older records are harder to find, 4) But if some one wants to do it, here's the space: S/N Model Owner path 1 1 LANL NCAR 6 1A LLNL 14 1A SDC AFWL MFECC Smithsonian 32 1S AFWL NAM Where is a current list of sites? --------------------------------- That's SGI/CRI's concern. Ask them. You can also look at Gunter's list and the "TOP500" list Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:26:56 -0700 From: Jim Davies Message-Id: <199503151626.JAA22031@tnt.Craycos.COM> Subject: Re: cray >|We have a Cray-2 prototype here called snq2 (q for quadrant), >snq2 isn't the thing that Newt Perdue had a photo of in the aquarium? I don't really know; I've only worked here, not at CRI. I think there was a snq1 also, which would have been the first prototype. >S7? Not a serial number is it? Sort of; it's the "seventh" Cray-3 tank we built. Numbers S1 through S4 are one-octant tanks, S5 and S6 are two-octant tanks (S5 is the one at NCAR which they call "greywolf"), and S7 is the only four-octant tank. The module sets have tended to roam freely between tanks as needed (e.g. S6 hasn't ever spent any long periods in production because it gets used to test spare and replacement modules for S5 and S7). S4 has been converted to a 2-octant tank for use as the PIM system. S1 through S3 are essentially gone at this point -- replaced by Cray-4 tanks. Yes. They're not quite like the old T registers, in that they have data paths to the A, S, and V regs. We're using them for argument passing, stack pointers, scalar register spills, scratch space for vector reductions, etc. (i.e. the same sort of things local memory was used for, except no vector register spills). There are no direct move instructions between A and S registers, so they're used for those moves also (and we still have a word-addressable architecture so we need to do character pointer manipulation in S registers, shifting and masking to convert char pointers to word pointers, etc.). My feeling about local memory was that it was never large enough. In fact, Seymour's initial Cray-4 design had a larger local memory (128K or 256K, one or two extra modules depending on user's needs). He was convinced by our benchmarkers that an extra memory port would be more useful, in addition to reducing the processors to one module apiece. It seemed logical, since the goal of caching is to ease the memory bottleneck, and the second memory port also helps with this (while making the machine smaller). Arguably one of our problems with local memory was lack of adequate compiler technology to use it; to properly use it as a programmable cache really requires looking at entire loop nests rather than the cray-traditional inner-loop-only vectorization scheme. We're working on loop-nest optimizations now, since even the vector registers may be used this way in many cases. Also, which port gets used for a particular load or store is completely under the programmer's control, so the compilers have to make some tougher optimization choices in this regard also. >Every one else wants CCC to do well. I suggested to a friend at IBM TJW to >again submit a PR to get a C-4. Thank you. Our problem, as always, is making the machine work. It's always seemed that once we can produce a reliable fast system the marketting should be the easy part (although the Cray-3 was so late that it wasn't true for that machine). Take care, -- Jim Cray Electronics holdings /Cray Communications /Cray Systems will be changing their names to Anite systems etc. There has always some confusion between these companies and the unrelated Cray Research ( now a Silicon Graphics company ) http://www.vars.com/ewv/ccc.html Message-Id: Date: Fri, 27 Sep 96 21:11 MDT From: sog@rmi.net (Stephen O Gombosi) I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The definitions are really quite simple (yes, Gene, I want credit for these): -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Devil's Supercomputing Dictionary - A Guide To Vendorspeak For The Unwary And The Perplexed by Stephen O. Gombosi (with apologies to Ambrose Bierce) Supercomputer - What *I* am selling today Dinosaur - 1) What *they* are selling 2) What you already have that I am trying to replace with my "supercomputer", even if it is something that I personally told you was a "supercomputer" when I sold it to you yesterday. Good code - Code that runs well on a "supercomputer" and badly on a "dinosaur" Bad code - Code that runs well on a "dinosaur" and badly on a "supercomputer". Industry standard benchmark - A whole bunch of "good code" Unrepresentative code fragments whose performance is irrelevant - A whole bunch of "bad code" Fair and open procurement - Anything that results in the sale of a "supercomputer" Free and fair trade - Anything that results in the sale of *lots* of "supercomputers" Grand challenge problem - Any problem, however trivial, which can be solved *only* with "good code" Dusty deck - "Bad code" which I cannot figure out how to replace with "good code" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Article 6395 of comp.sys.super: From: tabe@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Theodore Tabe) Newsgroups: comp.sys.super Subject: Seymour Cray Dies Date: 5 Oct 1996 20:12:46 GMT Organization: University of Michigan EECS Message-ID: <536ffu$n5h@news.eecs.umich.edu> High-Tech Legend Seymour Cray Dies COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuter) - Seymour Cray, known as the father of the supercomputer, died early Saturday nearly two weeks after suffering serious injuries in a car accident, a hospital spokeswoman said. He was 70. ``Seymour Cray died at 2:53 a.m. (4:53 a.m. EDT). The cause of death was complications from massive head injuries,'' said Kate Brewster, spokeswoman at Penrose Community Hospital. Cray had been in the hospital since Sept. 22 when his Jeep Cherokee was hit by another car on Interstate-25 in Colorado Springs. Cray is credited with developing the first fully transistorized supercomputer in 1958, and after he formed his own company bearing his name in the 1970s, his name became synonymous with cutting-edge technology. In 1957 with Bill Norris he started Control Corp., and then founded Cray Research in Minnesota in 1972. Many of Cray's supercomputers -- large scientific machines that can process large amounts of data at great speeds -- were used by the U.S. government, including the military. Earlier this year, Cray Research was sold to Silicon Graphics Inc. Cray then established Cray Computer Corp. in Colorado Springs, which was separate from the first Cray company and which filed for bankruptcy in 1995 after it failed to attract some $20 million it needed from investors. The development of the personal computer that delivered high power right to the desk of scientists and engineers and slimmer defense budgets spelled the end for the supercomputer, whose cost can run as high as $30 million. Reut11:16 10-05-96 (05 Oct 1996 11:16 EDT) Article 6413 of comp.sys.super: From: tjohnson@flowbee.interaccess.com (Tom Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.super Subject: Seymour Cray Date: 8 Oct 1996 11:48:41 -0500 Organization: InterAcces, Chicagolands best Internet Provider Message-ID: <53e0l9$aln@flowbee.interaccess.com> The following is from "The Computer Establishment" by Katherine Davis Fishman, copyright 1981 by Harper and Row. Transcribed without their permission, but hey, I really do recommend this book! The prospectus of Control Data stated that the company's principal initial business would be research and development for the military, and that the company would also get into components and computer accessories; it did not intend to compete head-on with IBM and the other giants of the industry. But among the former ERA [ Engineering Research Associates] men whom [Willliam] Norris wooed away from Univac was a talented engineer named Seymour Cray, who convinced Norris that a poweful, relatively inexpensive solid-state computer built from printed circuit modules would prove highly profitable. You could sell it to sophisticated customers -- the Department of Defense, the aircraft companies, the universities -- who did not require a heavy investment in marketing and support; they knew quality when they saw it, and preferred to do their own programming. Development of Cray's 1604 computer was a costly program for a small company to undertake, and Norris had just spent half a million dollars on his first aquisition, a production engineering firm. Still, he took the gamble, and the salaries of CDC employees were cut in half while the 1604 was in progress. [ There is a photo in the book with the caption: "Control Data's first computer leaves the shipping dock. From left to right: William Norris, Frank Mullaney, George Hanson and a representative of North American Van Lines. The system arrived at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California on January 12, 1960." The two crates pictured beside the moving van are clearly labeled ' 1604 '. Mr. Cray is nowhere to be seen. ] [ Continuing on page 202 ]: The 1604 computer's success in the scientific community -- CDC reported its first profits after less than two years of operating, an extraordinary record for a mainframe company -- gave Cray a reputation for genius, a fame nourished not only by further design successes but by the man's peculiar, reclusive personality. As the company grew Cray began to complain that it wasn't any fun any more: administrative and ceremonial duties were getting him down. He had a single-minded ambition to design the largest computers in the world, and about these machines he could talk eleoquently; on any other subject he was silent. What Cray wanted was to work in some quiet woodsy place like his hometown, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where he owned some land. As for Norris, he was betting on Cray, who was clearly a man worth coddling. He built a lab on Cray's land, and Cray became known as the Hermit of Chippewa Falls. Norris visited the lab twice a year by appointment and Cray came to headquarters every six weeks or so. The rest of the time he worked far into the night with his soldering iron. When one of Norris's aides brought some professors, prestige customers, out to the lab to see The Hermit, Cray gave an illuminating talk on his current project and then, in honor of the occasion, took the visitors out to the local diner -- an almost unheard-of mark of favor since Cray usually brought his lunch in a metal pail. But after finishing his hot dog -- with dispatch -- Cray arose, said he'd better be getting back to work, wished the professors a pleasant trip and walked out. There was, perhaps, a certain showmanship in such a performance, but if so, it didn't hurt the company. { from pages 202-3 of "The Computer Establishment } BTW, I wrote my very first programs in FORTRAN and assembler ('CODAP') on a CDC 1604 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1966-7. Article 6414 of comp.sys.super: From: glover@hikimi.cray.com (Roger Glover) Newsgroups: comp.sys.super Subject: Re: CraySuper vs. Pentium Pro Date: 8 Oct 1996 15:26:37 GMT Organization: Cray Research, Inc. Message-ID: <53drrd$bi1@walter.cray.com> References: <01bbb4a1$3560eee0$def3ae8c@xx> In article <01bbb4a1$3560eee0$def3ae8c@xx>, "x" writes: > A Cray C94A would be equivalent to how many Pentium Pro 200's? In one sense of meaning this can be answered straightforwardly; in another sense this is almost impossible to gauge accurately. The first meaning occurs if we rephrase the question as follows: How many times could a CRAY C94A complete a unit of work before the Pentium Pro 200 completes it once? Then the procedure is straightforward: time one, time the other, divide. This measure gives us a sense of the relative "capacities" of the two machines. As long as we can agree on what unit of work to time there is no problem. The second meaning occurs if we rephrase the question as: How many Pentium Pro 200s working in concert would it take to complete a unit of work as fast a CRAY C94A completes that unit of work? The difficulty here is that, even if we agree on the unit of work, we then have to agree how to design that parallel array of Pentium Pro 200s, how to estimate the granularity of the work distribution, and so on. All these additional complications have to do with how well the unit of work will "scale" across an array of Pentium Pro 200s. Beyond that, it is much more difficult to agree on a fair unit of work. For example, if the unit of work does not have sufficient intrinsic parallelism, an infinity array of Pentium Pro 200s communicating instantaneously would not be as fast as a CRAY C94A (or any other significantly faster system). The guiding principle here is called "Amdahl's Law"; it is a straightforward corollary to the "Law of Diminishing Returns." Check for it in the FAQ the next time that part of the FAQ rolls around. > Does anyone have a MIPS rating on the C94A and the Pentium Pro 200? C94A: Yes, PP200: Not me. > Would it be proper to compare using MIPS? ABSOLUTELY NOT! As a code closes in on peak performance on a CRAY C94A, the MIPS rate actually goes **DOWN**. This is because peak efficiency occurs for vector work, and one vector instruction can start as many as 128 operations on a CRAY C90 processor. I have heard MIPS referred to as: - Meaningless Indicator of Performance Statistic - Makes Idiots Purchase Shtuff (or whatever) - Marketing Is Pushing Something MIPS can be meaningful for comparing systems with the same general architecture, but for comparisons between processors as different as Cray and Intel, MIPS is worse than useless; it is actively misleading. Go to comp.arch for more about this. For my money, the best measure of performance between heterogeneous systems is CPU-memory bandwidth. And the best measure of bandwidth of which I am aware is John McAlpine's "Streams" benchmark suite. By that measure, based on the result data found at URL: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/standard/Bandwidth.html the CRAY C94A is (in the first sense of meaning): **************** * * * 197 to 209 * * * **************** times faster than the Pentium Pro 200. Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 14:51:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199610081851.OAA12073@eve.umiacs.UMD.EDU> From: "David A. Bader" Subject: Cray, as told by Markoff This is great! -david Forwarded message: > Message-Id: <9610080543.AA31248@duncan.ssc.wisc.edu> > Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:15:01 -0700 > Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of > Cyberspace" > From: Audrie Krause > Subject: IP: Re: a marvelous obit re: Seymore Cray by John Markoff > To: Multiple recipients of list CYHIST > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > David, > > I have permission from John Markhoff of the NY Times to forward the > following story to the CYHIST list. Markhoff had shared it with Dave > Farber, who posted it to his IP list. This is a brief annecdote that did > not make it into Markhoff's obit on Cray. > > Audrie > > --------------------------- > > > David, > > Thanks very much. As occasionally happens sometimes the anecdotes I > value most don't make it into the paper. This is a story John Rollwagen > told me. You're welcome to share it with your list. > > > Mr. Cray would do much of his computer design work on a fresh pad > of engineering paper, frequently going through an entire pad in a day. > There have been many legends that have grown up around Mr. Cray's > reclusive work habits which frequently went late into the night. > Mr. Rollwagen recounts one story of a customer who visited Mr. > Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. When the man asked, 'what were the secrets > of his success, Mr. Cray said, "Well, we have elves here and they help me." > When the visitor, who was a French scientist, expressed his > astonishment, Mr. Cray took him to look at a tunnel that he had dug under > his home. Shored up with four by four cedar logs, the tunnel appeared to go > in random directions, at one point going straight up into Mr. Cray's lawn. > (Mr. Cray later explained to Mr. Rollwagen that the tunnel had gone > straight up because one day it had collapsed while he was digging it and a > tree in his front yard had fallen into the tunnel.) > Mr. Cray explained to his visitor that he would work at his home on > computer design problems for three hours at a stretch. When he reached a > technical stumbling block, he would then retire to the tunnel where he > would dig for an hour. > "While I'm digging in the tunnel the elves will often come to me > with solutions to my problems," he said. > > > > -- > Audrie Krause <> E-MAIL: akrause@igc.org > 601 Van Ness Ave., No. 631 San Francisco, CA 94102 > TELEPHONE: (415) 775-8674 FAX: (415) 673-3813 > * * * WEB: http://www.netaction.org * * * > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com) > Moderator: Community Memory > http://www.reach.com/matrix/community-memory.html > A CPSR Project -- http://www.cpsr.org -- cpsr@cpsr.org > Materials may be reposted in their *entirety* for non-commercial use. > > Get this list in digest form: SET CYHIST DIGEST > Leave this list: SIGNOFF CYHIST > Send these commands to: listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 14:47:36 -0700 (PDT) From: ciotti (Bob) Message-Id: <199610082147.OAA19023@laika.nas.nasa.gov> To: unicos-l@cugsrv1.cug.org Subject: Re: Seymour Cray > Subject: Seymour's Services > Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 16:08:32 -0400 > > > SEYMOUR R. CRAY, 71, a world-renowned designer of supercomputers, died Oct. > 5, 1996. > > Memorial services will be held in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and Colorado Springs, > CO. Seymour's family would like to have a "Celbration of Life" with > Seymour's friends. The "Celbration of Life" will be held in Chippewa Falls > at the Cray Research Inc. River Side Building at 2:00PM on Oct 12; and in > Colorado Springs at the Red Lion Inn at 2:00PM on Oct 18. > > Mr. Cray was born Sept. 28, 1925, in Chippewa Falls to Seymour and Lillian > (Scholer) Cray. He was married Oct. 8, 1980, to Geri Harrand, who lives in > Colorado Springs. > > He is survived by a son, Steven of Chippewa Falls; two daughters, Susan > Borman of Eau Claire, Wis., and Carolyn Arnold of Minneapolis; a sister, > Carol Kersten of Rochester, Minn.; and five grandchildren. > > Mr. Cray had served in the Army during World War II. He completed graduate > school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 1957 he left Univac > to form Control Data Corporation. In 1972, he founded Cray Research Inc., > where he had developed the world's fastest super-computers used for research, > weather forecasting, oil exploration and nuclear energy. He had lived in > Colorado Springs for eight years. > > Memorial contributions may be made to the Pikes Peak Area Trails Coalition, > 1426 N. Hancock, Suite 4, Colorado Springs 80903; or to the Seymour R. Cray > Memorial, University of Minnesota, 1300 S. Second St., Suite 200; Minneapolis > 55454. > the initial report of the automobile accident -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-09-23/top010.html a story on the dangerous intersection at which the accident occurred -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-09-24/top010.html report of seymour's condition stabilizing -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-09-25/top030.html report of seymour's death -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-10-06/top010.html obituaries including seymour's -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-10-06/loc300.html report of "celebration of life" planned for 18 October -- http://www.usa.net/gtonline/archive/96-10-09/top040.html Here is also a URL for the transcript of a Video History Interview with Seymour by David Allison from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History on May 9th, 1995. http://innovate.si.edu/history/cray/craytoc.htm Speed has always been important otherwise one wouldn't need the computer. --Seymour Cray From a purely economic/business mode, it is really hard to see how any of the "big" supercomputing startups could possibly have survived. Consider the numbers: ETA spent ~$400 Million SSI spent >$250 Million CCC spent >$200 Million Right now, the worldwide market for computers costing $5 Million and up is about $680 Million per year. The life expectancy of a supercomputer design is about 4 years. Even assuming really fat manufacturing margins, one would be very hard pressed to apply more than 50% of gross income to retiring the engineering/development costs. The product is going to begin with 0% market share, and by four years later is going to again have near 0% market share as it is eclipsed by competitor's products and subsequent generations from the original vendor. So what sort of market share would be required to pay off the investments incurred by these startups? The numbers show that you would have to *average* 20% market share for a four-year period, *and* be able to apply >50% of gross income to retiring the initial investment (or rolling over to the next generation). Given the inevitable cycle of desirability of a product, you would probably have to capture 40% market share at your peak to do this. This is approximately the share of the high-end market that is held by SGI+Cray, and is about 3x larger than the next largest entry. I would certainly not want to bet my money on *anyone* being able to do that in the current era. The only way to succeed is to do the initial development for very little money, and/or arrange financing that does not need to be paid back.... WHAT IS A SUPERCOMPUTER/GAM's (God's) section Simulation and modeling problems are used to study physical systems. As they are refined, they tend to become more complicated. and require very large memories . One thing that generally stays the same is the desire to run these problems in the shortest time possible. When such problems are run on that computer which does it the fastest, we say we are doing Supercomputing. This shows the concept of Supercomputing from the point of view of an application. As an example of such problem growth one fluid flow simulation needed about 100 floating point operations per mass point when it was first developed over twenty years ago. This the calculation has been continuously refined by adding improved approximations of the physics and improving the fineness of detail by increasing the number of points in the application space, and currently requires over forty thousand floating point operations per mass point, and the number of mass points has grown by a factor of over ten thousand. When the problem was first developed it was represented as about a dozen dynamical quantities per mass point. The current version maintains over two hundred such quantities per mass point. During the course of a problem run, the calculation is carried out at every mass point every cycle. All this improvement notwithstanding, the calculation takes less time today that when it was begun, The amount of time needed in the beginning was about 20 to 40 hours for as big a problem as then seemed worthwhile doing. It is the same today. This is the effect of running the program on a Supercomputer. In the process enormous quantities of data are generated and of course, much of this must be saved for a variety of reasons. Obviously, very large and as fast-as-possible storage devices are needed. Thus Supercomputing is characterized by any combination of a big computational burden, a big memory requirement, big I/O and storage requirements and shortest time of execution. It seems most useful to consider the question of software. Most commentators usually skirt this problem. Superficially, the software used for small computers is roughly the same as for that used in the Supercomputers with certain exceptions: 1. Software developed on small or otherwise inadequate computers usually shows all sorts of inadequacies, such as too small tables, or other installation and memory limitations 2. Software that originates on small computers is generally not robust; nor easily expendable. Please understand that these are observations not criticisms. Supercomputer applications equally need good compilers, editors, debuggers, file managers and so on. But the applications are typically so big that the support software must be very commodious and robust, and such things don't usually come from software developed on small machines. There are no doubt, a few exceptions, but it is a matter of fact that the highly vaunted time sharing systems that came from MULTICS generally were not able to manage the extreme sizes of most Supercomputer applications. And so forth. The first commercially available computer in this country, generally thought to be the UNIVAC 1 (UNIVersal Automatic Calculator) in 1945 or so, owes its existence in no small way to the ideas of John von Neumann, John Mauchly, and J, Presper Eckert, and the support of the Franklin Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia - a business! { Considering the experiences since then, this is very surprising; businessmen generally take, not give.} By the time the UNIVAC was deliverable, the Eckert-Mauchly Company had been acquired by the Sperry Remmington Rand Company. The first scientific problems run on this machine were related to the study of nuclear energy and weather prediction. Both areas depended on Hydrodynamic calculations. In the early days of computing, hardware that was developed for (Super) Computer usage always found its way into the smaller, and lower cost computers that everyone "knew" would be the basis for future man-machine interactions. It is worth noting that today component innovation is something that relies almost exclusively, on the mini/micro computer industries, and we hear things like the micros will kill Supercomputers. Without belaboring these trends, I can only say that they both seem wrong-headed and unfortunate. Once such computers became available, three government agencies were most responsible for the design and construction of big computers, though at first they were not known as Supercomputers. In fact, these agencies weren't formally chartered until sometime later, but for the purposes of this response, I will consider their influences as beginning in the 40s. The agencies were the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). Although at the worker level there was practically no coordination between these agencies, each stressed computing features that nicely fitted together. Technically, the following is rather an oversimplification, since each agency strove for total system-level improvements. Notwithstanding, the features listed here were particularly important. All three agencies needed very large memories The AEC needed high speed floating point arithmetic The NSA needed high speed fixed-point arithmetic and input/output The NASA needed very flexible input/output. I suspect that very few people have ever written a program that needed to be run on a Supercomputer, so it might be helpful to examine some of the characteristics of such programs. To anticipate a chorus of exceptions, I will say just once, "Not all programs exemplify all the following characteristics." When you read what's below and wish to object, refer to the foregoing sentence. Generally the control flow in the program is rather straightforward. The three things most needed in a Supercomputer are: fast arithmetic, large memories, equally fast I/O, and a usable, robust operating environment. {So I can't count ... either.} A typical problem may require between 10^14 and 10^17 arithmetic operations; clearly, the floating point unit has to be big and fast, and so does the memory (typically each floating point operation is responsible for 24 bytes of memory traffic.) * Very large memories are needed to accommodate the billions of WORDS needed for each data set, and the memory traffic on average has to move 3 words (24 bytes: 16 in and 8 out) per floating point operation.. It is typical that every data point is re-computed every cycle and it is usual that on each cycle each point requires tens of thousands of arithmetical operations. Often there is an enormous gush of output. Number ranges are often too big for anything other than floating point. Notwithstanding, there is always a problem of retaining some numerical significance so multiple precision arithmetic is vital. Perhaps you can guess that there is just a limited number of genuine Supercomputing applications, but even this number shrinks dramatically when we try to see who is willing to pay for developing a given problem. Given that there is a problem that needs to be run on a Supercomputer, it should be obvious that it won't run constantly, so hundreds or thousands of smaller problems can be run during such gaps. A common mistake among certain critics is to say that this is a waste of Supercomputer resources, or that it is simply not cost-effective. It should be clear from the foregoing that the criticism is simply wrong-headed. Supercomputing is not defined by these little problems, but they can and do benefit enormously by being run on a big machines. A little problem on a big machine is easily managed, but it becomes a big problem on a little machine, So, instead of wasting a lot of time trying to figure our how to fit it into a small or otherwise inadequate machine, the developer is free to concentrate on making the problem do what he wanted it to do. (I admit that some people like to squeeze every last twitch out of a computer. To others, such behavior is unseemingly for real gentlemen.) The choice of the price of a Supercomputer is not clearly useful. To see this, we review some (cynical) definitions of Supercomputing. 1: The first idea we considered is that a Supercomputer is that machine which will run your problem the fastest. Notice it's your problem, and it's not necessarily the machine you are currently using, and the concept of "fastest" is one you should control. You might reasonably decide that it's total through-put time that matters rather that how fast one can do arithmetic. 2. Showing some real insight, Ken Batcher stated that, "A Supercomputer is one that will change your compute-bound problem into one that is I/O-bound." Notice here that the limitations related to I/O are intrinsically tied to the nature of the problem. Words like "entry-level," and "mini-super" have entered the lexicon via over-zealous marketers and salesmen in order to sell things that are not necessarily supercomputers. (The term itself first appeared about twelve years ago. Who first used it is subject to argument, but Jack Worlton was one of the first to speak about such machines, and today is a leading advocate in trying to change the term to (Ultra) High Speed or Performance Computing, because as he notes, marketers have thoroughly trashed the original meaning of "Supercomputer.") Typically the inadequacies of small computers reside largely in their inability to support adequate memory traffic and FAST I/O. 3. Still another kind of insight: Neil Lincoln says that a Supercomputer is one that is only one generation away from being what you really need. We can observe here that it is the application that decides if you're using a Supercomputer, and finally to put extra stress on the idea that "the concept of "fastest" is one you should control." consider what you would hold important if all the arithmetic in your problem took zero time. How fast would your problem run, and now what would you do to make it go faster. I hereby apologize for the obscene length of this polemic. 0. originally a main distinguishing characteristic of big machines was the amount of storage (memory and disk and tapes available. 1. High speed computer development used to (until ~1968) be a source of design and components for less capable (and cheaper) machines. 2. Most of the applications that run on supercomputers aren't 'real' supercomputer problems. It's just cheaper and faster to run on a big machine. 3. Certain applications imply a complexity level that connot be done on anything but a supercomputer. Typically these are characterized by at least one of the following: much larger than average number of computations per mass point; unusual kind of computational needs per mass point; very large number of mass points; a real time requirement;sheer volume of work. 4. As Gene says, the results don't have to be accurate, merely consistent. And I add, physically defensible. 5. Considering the part of the user community that makes real use of Supercomputers, and on the basis of direct talks with many such perrsons, I say that none of these real users make any use of Linpack results which convey no data useful to these real applications. The people who run say, the community weather model represent a form of application that has hardly any connection with Linpack; what Linpack may show has hardly import to the algorithms the weather models use. Cray Research managed to build it's first shippable Cray 1 for under $10 Million. Of course, it did not have much software. Convex managed to build it's first shippable C-1 for around $20 Million, including software. Others have also gotten to market with innovative hardware for a lot less than $100 Million. Critical issues for startups: 1) Know what your initial target market is and understand what it requires. 2) Maintain focus and don't allow significant investment in anything that does not aid that market. 3) Do everything you can to minimize time to market. Every extra month just burns more money. 4) Keep your initial staff small (just large enough to do the job). More people mean more time spent communicating instead of doing. If you are very selective in hiring, only accepting the top 10% of potential candidates, and motivating them with "average salaries and extraordinary stock options, plus exciting work", you should be able to get several times industry average effort and productivity. 5) Use other people's work whenever possible - like starting with Unix as an OS instead of inventing your own. Look for strategic partnerships in as many areas as possible. These efforts will help (3) and (4). 6) Be lucky. :-) [It helps to be first one to market in your niche, or for your target market to experience a business boom just as your product is ready. It also helps for your vendors to deliver what they promise. The reverse of any of these can sink you. Examples abound.] Memorial contributions be made to the Pikes Peak Area Trails Coalition, 1426 N. Hancock, Suite 4, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 or the Seymour R. Cray memorial at the University of Minnesota. The following interview with Seymour Cray appeared in the December 1982 issue of Datamation magazine. The interviewer, Jan Johnson, posed the same questions to four people: Gene Amdahl, Victor Poor, James Thornton, and Seymour Cray. There were also follow-up questions addressed to individuals. Transcribed below are the questions addressed to Cray, and his answers. All ellipses are in the text as it appeared in Datamation. A lot of Cray's answers are memorable. Tom Ace tea@netcom.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Datamation: What technological developments in the past five to 10 years have had the biggest impact on your niche of the computer industry? Cray: I guess there haven't been any. Datamation: No developments in mathematics, architecture, or in new ways of looking at things? Cray: Well, the problem I have with probably most of these questions is that I don't pay much attention to what is going on in the world. I just do my own kind of work, so if there were something new in mathematics, I wouldn't know about it. Datamation: What have been some of the driving forces behind the changes in your niche of the industry? Cray: If Fairchild would quit trying new technology out on us, we'd get our parts a lot faster. They are always giving us this new technology and of course it doesn't work, so they have to keep trying it again. It seems like a real deterrent to getting our job done because it's never necessary to have the new technology. Datamation: What do you call state of the art? Cray: I suppose that it is whatever you can do. Datamation: Do you believe the days of big advances in computing technology are gone? Cray: Looking at my own work, since I have such a narrow view of things here, the advances don't seem to be any different than they ever were. Between the Cray 1 and the Cray 2 the clock rate dropped from 12.5 ns to 4 ns. That's the same sort of geometric progression we've had in the past. Performance of the machine is six to 12 times the previous model, which is more aggressive than it has been in the past. It seems that we are progressing at about a constant rate. I don't see that changing in the next machine, either. Datamation: What do you see as the next big advance in your part of the industry? Cray: I guess the big change we need now is in materials. We have a project investigating areas in chemistry. We need different materials than silicon. The U.S. technology has been locked into silicon because the manufacturing facilities are locked in. We can't break out and create new directions into anything else because everything has been set up. It's the same problem as in the automobile and steel industries. Right now, there are a lot of management people in the large semiconductor companies who are getting nervous about the situation. They can see the situation being a locked-in one. But they have just recently recognized it. They should have recognized it four or five years ago. Now they don't have time to make the conversion to meet my purposes. My effort is not going to be inhibited; I can find no one to help me, so I am proceeding with gallium arsenide. It's not my choice; the only place we can buy is in Japan, and I don't want to do that. All the Japanese machines are going to be made with gallium arsenide. Datamation: So you're making the chips? Cray: That's what I'm saying. It's not my choice. Datamation: How far away do you think your project is? Cray: The first delivery is in fall of '86 and it's a three-year program. So we have to develop it in '83 to ship it in '86. Datamation: What problems do you have in working with gallium arsenide? Cray: Well, it's hard to pronounce. Once you get over that ... Datamation: What do you run into? Cray: Indium phosphide. Datamation: What have been some of the limitations you've encountered in your niche of the industry? Cray: I suppose the limitations are just the visions of the designer; there aren't any physical limitations. I can't see very far ahead, so I just take small steps--and I keep taking small steps because I don't want to retire yet. For myself, it's always been a matter of not being able to communicate well enough with other people to get any help from them; so I do it myself. My limitations, then, are what I can do in my own personal time. I don't use special tools when I design except paper and pencil. If you are looking for barriers, I don't think there's any one physical barrier. It's only the ability to conceive of the next step. It's always easy to do the next step and it's impossible to do two steps at a time. I think it's appropriate to say that each step is rather evolutionary, so of course you use what you learn from the previous step. I don't think I've done anything radical in my entire career. It's just been a series of small steps. It's just a matter of having the imagination to do the next step. Datamation: What has surprised you most in how your products are used? What are you learning about the use of your products? Cray: I just design these things for myself. I'm always surprised when other people use them. I don't know what all this supercomputer talk is about. They certainly aren't supercomputers; they are kind of simple, dumb things. Datamation: But they run fast and apparently that is making a big impression. Cray: Apparently that is important. Datamation: What has surprised you most about your competitors? Cray: You mean there are some of those? There probably are--I just haven't looked. Datamation: When you take a look at the industry today ... Cray: I never look back and I never look sideways. Datamation: Do you ever worry or think ... Cray: Never, never! Datamation: What has surprised you most about your market? Cray: I certainly have been surprised by the market. We keep selling computers to the same old people and they are getting old at the same rate that I am. We don't even need introductions when we come out with a new computer because we already know the people. It's just the same market for us over and over again. We sell a machine a month. We've always sold a machine a month. Pretty soon those people are going to start dying off--then what's going to happen? Where Seymour Cray lived: 1925-1943 Chippewa Falls, WI (birth through H.S. graduation) 1943-1947 Military 1947-1951 Minneapolis, Minn. (College) 1951-1962 Minneapolis (ERA, Control Data) 1962-1989 Chippewa Falls, WI (Control Data, Cray Research) 1989-1996 Colorado Springs, CO (Cray Research, Cray Computer, SRC) So here's where he lived in terms of fractions of his life: 63% of his life in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (45/71) 21% of his life in Minneapolis, Minnesota (15/71) 10% of his life in Colorado Springs, Colorado (7/71) "I enjoy the pessimism of the rest of the world." -- Seymour Cray "Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows how to program large parallel machines." -- Seymour Cray (needs confirming source) "Don't do anything that other people are doing. Always do something a little different or significantly different if you can... Every time you take a new approach, new ingredients, you increase risk. But it was my feeling, that the rewards would come often enough so that taking those kinds of risks would have a long-term benefit. And, I think they did during my career." -- Seymour Cray, 1994 http://www.cray.com/PUBLIC/WHATS_NEW/COMPANY/OCT96/NEC.html http://www.prairienet.org/~jlarson/Tribute_to_Seymour.html S/N-3 is still at NCAR, albeit not in production. [This may have changhed.] Display at the bottom of the stairs at the far end of the main lobby at the Mesa Lab. (NCAR also had S/N-14, which is in the Smithsonian Air And Space Museum in Washington D.C. the last time I was there -- for SC'94 I think.) The next time any of y'all are out this way, stop by and take a gander. The Mesa Lab itself, designed by I. M. Pei, is worth a look all by itself (view Woody Allen's Sleeper before visiting), and the network of hiking trails in the Flatirons behind the Lab are worth spending some time on, too. Avoid the deer, bears, and rattlesnakes. Eat lunch in the cafeteria; the food's not bad, and what the facility may lack in tablecloths it makes up for in the view. "I have really strong feelings about that," he said. "I feel the bigger the group that works on the project, the lower the chances for success. I'm appalled at our trying to make a country-wide coordinated effort. I just can't imagine it ever being successful. "I believe you want a lot of independent people thinking their own thoughts and trying their own things. We're not going to participate in any national effort, and I don't want any money from the government. We've got competition within the company. I've got a group here five miles away who I know are trying to outdo me." Hacker's Dictionary Entries --------------------------- cray /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all. 3. The canonical number-crunching machine. The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image. cray instability n. 1. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine (see cray). Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation or mini. 2. More specifically, a shortcoming of algorithms which are well behaved when run on gentle floating point hardware (such as IEEE-standard or DEC) but which break down badly when exposed to a Cray's unique `rounding' rules. crayola /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance for an unreasonably low price. Might also be a killer micro. crayon n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to be described as crayons. 2. A computron (sense 2) that participates only in number-crunching. 3. A unit of computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener. >crayon n. > >1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically, >it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, >and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Nothing could be further from the truth. I cannot recall *ever* seeing a programmer at CRI (or CCC) in a tie, unless it was needed to impress a customer - and often not then. At a place where the Founder and CEO typically wore flannel shirts, and could usually be found up to his elbows in a piece of recalcitrant hardware, the phrase "dress for success" had a somewhat atypical meaning. [Actually, I can't change that here; that's what's printed by MIT Press. We need to get that revised in the Jargon list.] Real Programmers (from Ed Post) ---------------- What kinds of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his program by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels, this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever his program destroyed the bootstrap. Back then, memory was memory - it didn't go away when the power was turned off. Today, memory either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after they're best forgotten. Legend has it that Seymour Cray (who invented the CRAY-1 supercomputer, and most of Control Data's computers) actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC-7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymour, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. From http://bush.cs.tamu.edu/~erich/misc/program This section is the Allen Gottlieb section. ------------------------------------------- "The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late." -- Seymour Cray @ CIA ~mid-1970 I guess it's not just great minds that think alike. :-) --Jim Davies ----- In article <5j7ntp$bij$1@cnn.nas.nasa.gov> you write: >2) When he designed the first Cray-1, s/n-1, Mr. Cray used RAM chips with >straight parity. The system was installed at the Los Alamos National >Laboratory. It averaged 20 minutes of blinding speed per system failure >(due to a parity error in memory). This was obviously a problem, so, after >consulting with the LANL folks ... My understanding (from my initial indoctrination at CRI back in'81) was that SECDED was added at *NCAR's* insistence, not LANL's. Might want to check this out with Vince Wayland (the original Cray AIC at NCAR) or Bob Walan (who sold the NCAR machine). >The story frequently goes: >A bright student or architect somehow manages to get time to visit >Seymour. Cray will listen to that student's ideas and nod understanding >or disagreement. He listens to a few ideas, but he makes a comment like > "Sounds good." >But that does NOT mean that Seymour will take the idea and place it into >His architectures. Too many people with improvements attempt >(fewer these days) to suggest improvements where Seymour is thinking: >If your idea is so good, why don't YOU run with it? Leave my ideas >(and his infrastructure) to me. Well, I don't know about this...but I do know that Seymour asked us poor, benighted programmers for suggestions when the Cray-4 was being designed. Amazingly enough, we got a *lot* of what we asked for. We also got explanations for why some of our requests simply weren't doable. >Note: from the Cray-2 (immersion) to the Y-MP (chilled) on, >CRI machines have been cooled by Fluorinert (tm) [a 3M product]. >Prior that that they were chilled using Freon. The C-3 (CCC machine) >was also immersion cooled. As was the Cray-4, just FYI. >"The future is seldom the same as the past" - Seymour Cray, 6/4/95. Hey, don't I get credit for reporting this one? I thought I'd clear up a few things that are in Jim's old letter to you: >Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:26:56 -0700 >From: Jim Davies >Message-Id: <199503151626.JAA22031@tnt.Craycos.COM> >Subject: Re: cray > > >>|We have a Cray-2 prototype here called snq2 (q for quadrant), >>snq2 isn't the thing that Newt Perdue had a photo of in the aquarium? >I don't really know; I've only worked here, not at CRI. I think >there was a snq1 also, which would have been the first prototype. Snq1 was the single-quad machine initially delivered to Livermore. Q2 was the machine delivered to the University of Minnesota. >>S7? Not a serial number is it? > >Sort of; it's the "seventh" Cray-3 tank we built. Numbers S1 through S4 >are one-octant tanks, S5 and S6 are two-octant tanks (S5 is the one >at NCAR which they call "greywolf"), and S7 is the only four-octant tank. >The module sets have tended to roam freely between tanks as needed >(e.g. S6 hasn't ever spent any long periods in production because it >gets used to test spare and replacement modules for S5 and S7). >S4 has been converted to a 2-octant tank for use as the PIM system. >S1 through S3 are essentially gone at this point -- replaced by Cray-4 >tanks. Actually, they were *modified* to be Cray-4 tanks. >Yes. They're not quite like the old T registers, in that they have >data paths to the A, S, and V regs. We're using them for argument >passing, stack pointers, scalar register spills, scratch space for >vector reductions, etc. (i.e. the same sort of things local memory And V<->S transfers (that was one of the things we *didn't* get). 2) The two full prototype machines, which were 1 CPU each, sn-Q1 & >sn-Q2. <of a Cray-2, which had 4 CPUs.>> The UofMinnesota Super Computer >Center had one of these systems for a long time. ... The other spent >time at the 1440 Northland Drive (Mendota Heights, Mn.). FYI: SNQ2 ended its life at Cray Computer in Colorado Springs. It was shut down for good about the time the first Cray-3's became operational in 1993-ish. Ducky Day 1440 Northland Move this text around: Some additions for panel 18. [immersion cooling] ETA used liquid nitrogen immersion on its E and G models (10.5 and 7 ns clock respectively) [time line] Lloyd Thorndyke, in his address to the Frontiers of Supercomputing Conference at LANL in 1994, said the words "Engineering Technology Associates Systems" in reference to ETA Systems. However, when asked, Neil Lincoln would say "ETA is not an acronym, it doesn't stand for anything." Many think ETA is a play on ERA, the original TLA for the first Norris company. ETA also is a TLA for the Basque terrorist organization, FWIW. :-) You might as well take CDS off the time line, they don't make computers any more. [Well actually that's just a terminal state, so I'll keep it, but not grow it.] [vector machines] The Star-100 was the first memory-to-memory vector machine produced by CDC. Its lifetime was from the early '70s to the early '80s. It was all low density ECL, on boards that slid over "cold bars", water chilled. The Cyber 203 followed, and was half low density and half high density (IC); the Cyber 205 was all IC's. There were only a handful of 203 machines, all in the early 1980's. The 205's lifespan was around 10 years, from the early '80s to the early '90s. These machines were memory-to-memory vector, highly CISC. Many instructions were microcoded. The term "long vector" is relative; the R 1/2 speed varied on the machines; several hundred operands (64-bit words) on the Star, down to as few as 60-80 on the 205, depending on the instruction. The ETA machines reduced that further, down into the 10-20 range on some instructions with "vector shortstop", a technique to feed the results back into the vector pipes using shorter paths and less-than-full pipe results. Scalar shortstop, with the 256 64-bit register set, had been in place since the Star. These machines were always compared to the vector register machines from CRI from an architectural standpoint. [how many instructions] The Star-100 had 231 different instructions. Its successor machines had slightly less, each successor paring it down a bit. The ETA instruction set was quite a bit different in that it had CM instructions to help with semaphores and locks and such. However, even the ETA instruction set had several dozen instructions that were a near exact match for their Star-100 predecessors. Articles to bigrigg+parallel@cs.cmu.edu (Administrative: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu) Archive: http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/internet/usenet/comp.parallel