Seymour Cray: An Appreciation (1997)

> There are many legends about Seymour Cray. John Rollwagen, a colleague for many years, tells the story of a French scientist who visited Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. Asked what were the secrets of his success, Cray said "Well, we have elves here, and they help me". Cray subsequently showed his visitor a tunnel he had built under his house, explaining that when he reached an impasse in his computer design, he would retire to the tunnel to dig. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem", he said.

The book "The Supermen: Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer" (1997) is great.

What struck me when reading it was that the Cray 1 that Seymor Cray designed alone in his cabin.. when it went for sale in 1977 for $7.9 million it was a 64-bit single core computer running at 80 Mhz, with 8 MB RAM. This computer could probably have run Quake! In 1977! At a respectable resolution/framerate! In 1977! :)

I lived in Colorado Springs in the 90s when Seymour Cray had his new company there. It always baffled me how negative the press coverage of his company and the Cray-4 was. I was rooting for him to make a practical gallium arsenide chip.

I think he was greatly underrated and underappreciated by the larger culture. The man was an inventive genius, maybe even on the order of an Edison. Perhaps he was not as broad in his range of inventions as Edison, but his approach to building supercomputers probably included inventions and innovations in many areas.

I still usually think of him whenever I pass the on ramp on I-25 where he was killed. They have since revised that interchange to make it safer, too late for Mr. Cray, unfortunately.

It seems incredible that the little guy could compete on that level. In the days of AWS data centers this kind of disruption seems like a fairy tale.

technical work in SV has changed. geniuses with Cray's personality type aren't really valued much nowadays. it's important to be young, social, bearded and well-motivated by cafeteria food.