Cray-4

The Cray-4 was intended to be Cray Computer Corporation's successor to the failed Cray-3 supercomputer. It was marketed to compete with the T90 from Cray Research.[1] CCC went bankrupt in 1995 before any Cray-4 had been delivered.

Design

The earlier Cray-3 was the first major application of gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors in computing. It was not considered a success, and only one Cray-3 was delivered. Seymour Cray moved on to the Cray-4 design, announcing the design in 1994.

The Cray-4 was essentially a shrunk and sped-up version of the Cray-3, consisting of a number of vector processors attached to a fast memory. The Cray-3 supported from four to sixteen processors running at 474 MHz, while the Cray-4 scaled from four to sixty-four processors running at 1 GHz.[2] The final packaging for the Cray-4 was intended to fit into 1-cubic-foot (0.028 m3), and was to be tested in the smaller one-CPU "tanks" from the Cray-3. A midrange system included 16 processors, 1,024 megawords (8192 MB) of memory and provided 32 gigaflops for $11 million.[3]

The local memory architecture used on the Cray-2 and Cray-3 was dropped, returning to the mass of B- and T- registers on earlier designs, owing to Seymour's lack of success using the local memory effectively.

1994

"Significant technical progress was made during 1994 on the CRAY-4, which takes advantage of technologies and manufacturing processes developed during the design and manufacture of the CRAY-3. The Company announced introduction of the CRAY-4 to the market on November 10, 1994. Several single processor CRAY-4 prototype systems, each with 64 megawords of memory, were undergoing diagnostic testing prior to the Company filing for bankruptcy. The Company began testing individual CRAY-4 modules at the start of 1994 and planned to be able to deliver a 4-processor CRAY-4 prototype system by approximately the end of the second quarter of 1995. Upon filing of bankruptcy, the Company stopped work on the CRAY-4." [4]

Legacy

The processor with serial number 001 sold at auction for $37,500 on 22 September 2015. Manufactured in 1995, it is believed to be the only one in existence.[5] Parts of CPU prototypes exist. Marketing brochures also exist.

gollark: As they say, there is no escape.
gollark: Rescheduled to 2022.
gollark: (not February 30th; this does not, in fact, exist, under any circumstances. DO NOT believe any claims of its existence. Immediately cease contact with anyone who tells you it exists. The 30th of February does not, and in fact by definition cannot, occur. There is no 30/02. It is not real. Avert your gaze. IT IS NOT REAL.)
gollark: They hide a lot of things, actually.
gollark: Also February 31st.

References
  1. http://www.secinfo.com/dS9Jj.a1k.htm CCC 1995 8K and press release
  2. Cray develops Cray-4 (Apr 1994) Seems broken
  3. NASDAQ 1995 filing Archived 2007-04-29 at the Wayback Machine
  4. http://www.techagreements.com/agreement-preview.aspx?num=121632 CCC 1994 Annual Report
  5. "Early Apple computer fails to sell". BBC. September 22, 2015. Retrieved September 22, 2015. Has image of Cray-4 processor board.
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