26 Aug
2007
26 Aug
'07
4:04 p.m.
Michael Grigoni wrote:
SIP wrote:
He was very much a visionary, and a dedicated engineer... but
unfortunately, there's more to any project than simply the engineering
aspect, and I think Cray had issues with that. He was just a terrible
businessman, and very headstrong. In his idea, all you needed was a good
product, and people would buy it. Would that that were truly the case,
but time and time again, we're shown that often the BEST technology is
not the one people end up with because of poor marketing or business
decisions.
It's really a shame you didn't get to go to the lake house. That would
have made for an excellent memory. :)
N.
Michael Grigoni wrote:
<snip>
> Yes, Seymour liked to code in machine
language right from the console
> and the O/Ses for his machines developed 'organically' from the bottom up
> in general, but wouldn't you consider SCOPE, KRONOS, NOS etc. operating
> systems? And as for hardware, the CDC peripherals and Hyperchannel
> offerings seemed to be the best in the industry on Cray CPUs...
>
Right, but Cray himself was TOTALLY against their
creation.
<snip>
He was certainly well-known for a conservative engineering approach,
avoiding bleeding-edge technology (e.g. Integrated Circuits, later LSI)
and pushing mature technologies to incredible performance, but I had not
heard of a philosophical objection to making peripherals and operating
systems even though it was evident he felt it was the domain of others.
Then, again, when Cray Research was faced with
the decision of whether
to build computers that people would buy or computers for the sake of
building computers, they understood that they needed to stay in
business, and decided on the path that would lead them to solvency.
This caused Cray to leave his own company and form Cray Computers.
<snip>
Interesting. I remember the public face of this was that he needed to avoid
sole-source procurement problems with big government contracts so he formed
Cray Computers to the mutual benefit of both companies.
His nephew was a classmate of mine and once invited me to a visit to his uncle's
lake home; I wish I had been able to go (sadly too late now).
Regards,
Michael
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