The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed by Seymour Cray and manufactured by Cray Research. Its distinctive cylindrical shape and exceptional performance made it an icon of computing power and established Cray as synonymous with supercomputing.
Revolutionary Design
The Cray-1 introduced innovations that defined supercomputing:
- Vector processing: Operations on entire arrays of data simultaneously
- Register-to-register architecture: Fast internal data movement
- Compact design: Short wire lengths for speed
- Freon cooling: Liquid cooling for dense packaging
- Iconic shape: The curved design minimized wire lengths
Performance
The Cray-1 was the fastest computer of its era:
- 80 MHz clock speed
- 160 MFLOPS peak performance (millions of floating-point operations per second)
- 8 MB of main memory
- Vector instructions processed 64 elements in parallel
Applications
The Cray-1 transformed scientific computing:
- Weather forecasting
- Nuclear weapons simulation
- Cryptography
- Fluid dynamics
- Seismic analysis
Impact
Over 80 Cray-1 systems were installed at a price of $5-8 million each. The machine established supercomputing as a distinct field and made Cray Research the dominant force in high-performance computing for decades.