Eau Claire Info

The Seymour Cray Supercomputer concentrating on the Cray Corporate part of the museum one finds a fascinating history of Seymour Cray's achievements.  Cray Research, Inc., in particular, began collecting computer hardware and documents that showed the work of founder Seymour Cray and the development of the supercomputer industry.  This collection of items was on display at Cray Research, Inc.’s corporate offices here in Chippewa Falls for several years and continued to grow, thanks to many dedicated participants. The museum contains several CDC (Control Data Corporation) systems that were designed by Seymour Cray.

The first super-computer “Cray Computer” was invented in Chippewa Falls and brought thousands of jobs to the area. Here you will find information about Cray supercomputers, both those designed and built by Seymour Cray as well as machines built by the company. The Seymour Cray Supercomputer Collection is on exhibit at the (real) museum, and pictures from the exhibit are available here.  Seymour Roger Cray is regarded as one of the most brilliant minds in electrical and computer engineering and the innovator of supercomputing as it is known today. His company grew to be the leader in supercomputing and each system continues to carry his name.

Computers that proudly carried the Cray name can be divided into groups of related architectural families. Supercomputer are represented by artifacts, large and small, including the Cray-1, Cray Q2, Cray 3, Cray X-MP and others as well as documents and other memorabilia.

The first incarnation was the Cray-1, designed and built by Cray Research founder Seymour Cray. This is the actual computer that revolutionized super computing. Today’s desktop computer are approaching super computer speed, but they will never be vinyl covered and padded like the old Cray was. The Cray-1 evolved through a number of, often one-of-a-kind, sub-variants before being replaced by the evolutionary XMP and substantially different Cray-2. This split between the XMP and Cray-2 marked the first divide in the Cray architectural line that together came to define and dominate the super computing market for the best part of 20 years.

The Cray Supercomputer Company, now headquartered in Seattle, maintains a presence in Chippewa Falls, the place where it all began. Cray Inc. and Intel Corporation recently announced the signing of a multi-year agreement to advance high-performance computing on Intel processors while delivering new Intel and Cray technologies in future Cray server systems.

Contact:

Supercomputer in Chippewa Falls Museum
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [note: Please put XMP at the start of the subject line to distinguish it from the junk]