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CocoaGeek

Wait, Cray is still around?

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Yes. They even have their own programming language for super-computing: http://chapel.cray.com/

Cray is still the #1 supercomputer provider for US & bunch of other countries.

It's more a brand name at this point - like "Westinghouse" items sold at Target.

No, not quite — their interconnects are very impressive. It's true that they don't make CPUs anymore, but that stopped making sense a long time ago. If you want to be a supercomputer company these days the value is in the interconnect and software.

But most Cray systems, like the ones in this article, don't use Cray interconnects.

Cray sold their interconnect IP to Intel a few years ago. But yeah, Aries is impressive.

Surely also in the cooling systems. I remember on my visits to the Edinburgh supercomputing center, the quip was that Cray were a refrigeration company first. Like Tesla is a battery manufacturer.

That will have been for HECToR, an old XE system. They use the ECOphlex system which is a liquid evaporative phase-change cooling system using tetrafluoroethane.

The current XC line of supercomputers from Cray utilize more conventional cooling methods.

Oh, this was much further back. The last time I set foot in the JCMB was around 1996. I think the main workhorses of the day were a Cray T3D/T3E. ISTR there was a Y-MP in there as well.

Sure, 4 of the Top 10 systems in the Top500, but it's just a brand name at this point... /s

Their XC-series systems with Aries interconnect are very solid and dense systems. Even without their special interconnect and system management software, their software stack for developers and users is very mature and well supported by some of the best in the industry.

Westinghouse is still a big name in the nuclear industry...

More or less - from Wikipedia:

The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray.[8] Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995, while Cray Research was bought by SGI the next year. Cray Inc. was formed in 2000 when Tera Computer Company purchased the Cray Research Inc. business from SGI and adopted the name of its acquisition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray

I always thought they were named after the Cray twins. Not sure why.

You'd never heard of supercomputing legend Seymour Cray?! I find that really hard to believe.

On the other hand, I hadn't heard of the Cray twins before. Each day we learn something new.

That's partly because they're the Kray twins, though I had never heard of them before, either. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kray_twins

The Tom Hardy movie Legend is about the Kray twins (he plays both), and is well worth watching if you haven't seen it.

I have not! Seems to be on HBO, currently. I'll check it out.

Can you explain why this concept is difficult for you to believe?

Because this is Hacker News and there's so few superstar supercomputer architects (Seymour Cray, Steve Chen, Daniel Hillis) that it should be possible to recite their life stories off the top of one's head.

I've never heard of Steve Chen or Daniel Hills and I've been involved for about 15 years.

It's absurd to expect everyone here to hold the same knowledge of the world as you.

https://www.xkcd.com/1053/

I wasn't making fun of him. I genuinely thought he was joking.

That's Cray Cray!

From 3 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6284886

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