Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington.[1] The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. [3] 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. formed in 2000 when Tera Computer Company purchased the Cray Research Inc. business from SGI and adopted the name of its acquisition.[4] Read more...

Company history:

Background: 1950 to 1972
Seymour Cray began working in the computing field in 1950 when he joined Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. There, he helped to create the ERA 1103. ERA eventually became part of UNIVAC, and began to be phased out. He left the company in 1960, a few years after former ERA employees set up Control Data Corporation (CDC). He eventually set up a lab at his home in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, about 85 miles to the east. Cray had a string of successes at CDC, including the CDC 6600 and CDC 7600.

Cray Research Inc. and Cray Computer Corporation: 1972 to 1996[edit] Cray-2 supercomputer. When CDC ran into financial difficulties in the late 1960s, development funds for his follow-on CDC 8600 became scarce, and when he was told the project would have to be put "on hold" in 1972, Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research Inc., with research and development facilities in Chippewa Falls and the business headquarters in Minneapolis. The company's first product, the Cray-1 supercomputer, was a major success because it was faster than all other computers at the time. The first system was sold within a month for US$8.8 million. Seymour Cray continued working, this time on the Cray-2, though it only ended up being marginally faster than the Cray X-MP, developed by another team at the company.


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