3 ms·
Probably worth noting that the thesis of the article (that network effects and buyer lock-in would keep Cray from scumbing to competitors) didn't really pan. B
by simplicio 10y ago
Probably worth noting that the thesis of the article (that network effects and buyer lock-in would keep Cray from scumbing to competitors) didn't really pan. Both Cray founded companies went bankrupt a few years after the article was published.
- aab0 10y agoOne lesson I take away is how fragile a single-product company is. Each new Cray computer had to be either a total or good success, or the company would die. Like a shark, it had to keep swimming forward, and at Cray-3/4, it lost momentum and asphyxiated. Which is why now IBM builds so many supercomputers...
- aab0 10y ago(Which is not to take away from Cray's accomplishments. It's not every engineer, or every industry, where it's possible to decide to increase the performance of a device by an order of magnitude and do so something like 7 times in a row if you include Cray-3 and Cray-4 which apparently did physically exist, according to Wikipedia.)