bobw@wdl1.UUCP (Robert Lee Wilson Jr.) (02/17/88)
What is the status of this claim that Cray did not design the 6600? I was a grad student at a university which was considering an upgrade from a CDC 3600 at the time and I remember all the stuff we got, both formal documentation and also claims from CDC employees whom we knew, when the 6600 came out. As we got it then, Cray (and the others who had broken away from Sperry to form CDC) had designed the 1604 (and its spinoff the 924), a committee had designed the 3600 and its spinoffs, (The kludge design of the 3600 made this seem very believable :-)) and the 6600 was Seymour's own baby. Of course that doesn't mean he designed every detail of such a large product, but he was supposed to have been responsible for all of the architecture and timing, the lock mechanisms between processors, and in general the major breakthroughs that machine has always seemed to represent. That is also certainly the way it is presented in the Computer Museum in Boston. What basis is there for this denial of the sacred writ? Usual disclaimer: Nobody would believe me, if they did allow me to have opinions!
dtj@hall.cray.com (Dean Johnson) (02/19/88)
Regarding Bron Nelson's posting of 2/13 on Seymour Cray's involvement in the development of the CDC 6600: According to an ex-CDC CE for the 7600, Seymour Cray was in charge of Central Memory and the PPU. Les Davis was in charge of the FP Add and Long Add. Ray Thornton was in charge of the CPU. Evidently, when the 7600 was being designed, Seymour totally scrapped the 6600 CPU and started from scratch to eliminate internal conflict problems.