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◈ALB Atlas

Cray-1 Dead

Cray-1
KindMachine
Introduced1976
Discontinued1982
StatusDead
ManufacturerSeymour Cray / Cray Research
ClassSupercomputer
Platform64-bit vector, 80 MHz
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗

The supercomputer as furniture — C-shaped, upholstered, 160 MFLOPS. The first vector machine to succeed commercially; Los Alamos got serial number one.

Created by Seymour Cray Cray Research

The Cray-1 (1976) was Seymour Cray's comeback after CDC — a C-shaped tower with the wiring shortened by curvature and upholstered bench seating around the power supply. 160 MFLOPS, Freon-cooled, the first vector processor to sell.

Eighty units shipped at ~$8.8 million each — to Los Alamos, NSA, weather centers. Its design philosophy ('one fast scalar + vector pipes') dominated supercomputing for a decade.

Sources

  1. bitsavers.org/pdf/cray/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1