A visual history of Cray

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Cray timeline miniBack when I did the visual timeline of SGI following their most recent bankruptcy, I thought it would be fun to do the same thing for Cray. Now, 6 months and one bottle of wine later, its done. Here’s the thumb…click for the higher res version (and remember you might have to tell your browser to zoom in). Cray is an old company, spanning more than 30 years, so there is a lot of stuff to cover.

I started by tracing out the product announcements, then added CEOs over the years, acquisitions and mergers, the top position secured by a Cray computer in the November edition of every Top500 list since 1993, and a few items of personal interest to me. If you have an addition or correction, drop a comment on the post.

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Comments

  1. This is great!!

  2. Hi, very nice work!

    But what about the X2, XR1 and XT6(m)?

    Thanks and regards, AH

  3. @A. Haitz – well, I was counting the X2 as part of the XT5h. I could break it out, I guess, but I was thinking of it as part of that system. I’m happy to be argued out of that position if you’d like to make an argument. Same with the XR1, which (I think) is a blade for the XT5h. That said, the XT5m is significant, and I left it out, and I should have added the XT6 with a november launch date. Thanks for pointing out the omission.

  4. Christine Cuicchi says

    Nicely done!

  5. @John West: Thank you very much for your explanation! It makes sense.
    I would like to do that with NEC HPC at some point 🙂 …

    Best regards from Germany, AH

  6. @A.Haitz – I have the software and it’s pretty easy. If you want to send me an email with dates that should be on the timeline (I’m much less familiar with NEC than with Cray and SGI), I’d be happy to make one.

  7. @JW: Thanks for your offer! I will collect the infos and mail them to you, but it could take some time ;-)) … Best regards, AH

  8. No worries – I’m here when you are ready.

  9. A. Hastings says

    What about UNICOS 1.0, April 1986? First UNIX running on a supercomputer.

  10. @A. Hastings – that deserves to be added; thanks for the addition. I’ll work it into the next rev of the chart.