{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Oxide and Friends","title":"Supercomputers, Cray, and How Sun Picked SGI's Pocket","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/21f16511\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":5494,"description":"Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 8th, 2021\nSupercomputers, Cray, and How Sun Picked SGI’s Pocket\nWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 8th, 2021.\nIn addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 8th included Tom Lyon, Shahin Khan, Darryl Ramm, Dan Cross, Courtney Malone, MattSci, Aaron Goldman, Simeon Miteff, and Jason Ozolins. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)\nSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:\nBryan’s tweet about George Brown’s recommending “The Supermen”\nCharles Murray (1997) “The Supermen: The story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer” book\n[@1:28](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=88) Tom’s story meeting Boris Tom’s tweet on meeting Boris Babayan\nElbrus computers\n[@9:27](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=567) Supercomputers and power\n[@15:16](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=916) Cray designs Engineering Research Associates wiki\nControl Data Corporation wiki, CDC 1604\n[@20:36](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1236) ETA Systems wiki\n[@23:57](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1437) On to the next big thing Steve Chen\nCray X-MP\n[@29:37](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1777) Super computers as one-offs National Computational Infrastructure in Australia, NCI\nGallium arsenide\nGPGPU\n[@33:47](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2027) Shahin on interconnects Jason on failure caused by a storm\nCray C90\n[@41:06](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2466) Courtney on bespoke toolchains and systems\n[@42:42](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2562) Influence of Cray on Sun 1996 Sun to purchase Cray Business Systems Division, hpcwire\nFloating Point Systems Inc wiki > Shahin: SGI really had no use for this system. They should have just killed it.\n[@50:10](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3010) Origin story of...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/cVYTzMGAZ_7gNn2i7iJYSuWlQOM4wHdJAzEuWrnLo9A/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80OGI3/NjA5NWY4Yjc4NzE0/ZGI5ZmMzZmY4MjFi/YThiYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}