Hardware Podcasts

Supercomputers, Cray, and How Sun Picked SGI's Pocket

Oxide and Friends · 9 Nov 2021 · 1h 31m · Episode 21

What this episode covers

Bryan Cantrill, Tom Lyon, Shahin Khan, and Darryl Ramm discuss the history of supercomputing, focusing on Seymour Cray’s designs, the transition to commercial systems, and Sun’s acquisition of Cray’s Business Systems Division. They detail the technical challenges of early supercomputers, such as liquid cooling and massive PCBs, and the business failures of companies like ETA and Cray Computer. The conversation highlights Sun’s strategic purchase of the Cray BSD, which led to the E10k, and the debugging war stories that inspired the creation of DTrace.

Most relevant to

established companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Cray, Sun, SGI, CDC, ETA Systems, Floating Point Systems
Products
DTrace, E10k, Cray 1, Cray X-MP, Cray Y-MP, Cray 2, Cray C90, Cray T3D, Cray T3E, Cray CS 64100, Starfire, Sun Constellation, Bunyip, Elbrus
Also
Seymour Cray

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