mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (09/30/87)
In article <7470@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: <In article <954@edge.UUCP> doug@edge.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes: <| ... <|I wonder if Seymour Cray knows that he's barking up the wrong tree by <|designing multiple-chip CPUs? Somebody ought to tell him :-) < <Actually I think someone did. I read that his chief designer for <advanced products was "allowed to resign" when the single chip processor <was advocated over the multichip GaS version. Said designer then left to <form his own company. [To avoid confusion: when I say "Cray", I mean the person; I'll say "CRI" when I mean the company.] What you heard and what I read (in the Wall Street Journal) differ slightly. The story as they printed it was that Steve Chin (the designer in question) resigned when the MP project was cancelled. The difference of opinion appeared to be that Chin wanted to start from sand(*) on the MP parts, whereas CRI wanted him to start with pre-existing silicon. This could be a case of "pre-existing" meaning a multi-chip cpu similar to what CRI has already, and Chin wanting to do single-chip GaS cpu, but I didn't (and still don't) read it that way. Chin isn't "Cray's chief designer." He was CRI's *other* chief designer, the first being Cray. The two had their own teams for developing machines. Cray is working on the Cray 3; chin was working on the MP. This was to be the Cray for the next decade, with "many" (dozens?) of processors. Before the MP, Chin had designed the X/MP (the current fastest Cray's are X/MPs; Apple's got one, SDSCC's got one, UCB's got an old one) and the Y/MP. The Y/MP project is nearly complete, and Chins leaving isn't supposed to affect the release date for it. The parting between CRI and Chin was "amicable." Chin is being allowed to use the technology he developed for the MP project outside of CRI, but *not* for any of their competition. He has to build a company from the ground up. If I recall correctly, CRI is even providing some funding for this (thus allowing them to eat their cake, and still have a part of the pie :-). Chin is expected to hire most of the MP design team, while CRI is keeping some of them on their payroll until December - even though they aren't doing anything. As for multi-chip vs. single-chip cpus, the painful part of a Cray-class cpu appears to be cooling the things. The cooling system for every Cray I've ever seen has been at least as large as the cpu. That the Cray 2 is a liquid cooled machine (yes, chips and boards are immersed) ought to indicate how serious the problem is. I suspect going to multi-chip cpus lets you get the same speed with less heat. <mike (*) Sand is the second-lowest level I know of to start with. To get below that, you start with physicists :-). -- ICUROK2C, ICUROK2. Mike Meyer ICUROK2C, ICWR2. mwm@berkeley.edu URAQT, I WANT U2. ucbvax!mwm OO2EZ, I WANT U2. mwm@ucbjade.BITNET
mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (10/01/87)
In article <5270@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> I wrote a description of the
Cray/Steve Chen split. Several people wrote to point out that
1) GaAs is the material technology I mis-spelled as GaS. It's
apparently being used by Cray, but not by Chen.
2) Steve Chen's name is Chen, not Chin.
3) Cray is a trademark of Cray Research, Inc.
My thanks to those people. My only excuse is that I'm not a hardware
hack; a computer is a box I put programs in, and take diagnostics out
of.
<mike
--
Here's a song about absolutely nothing. Mike Meyer
It's not about me, not about anyone else, mwm@berkeley.edu
Not about love, not about being young. ucbvax!mwm
Not about anything else, either. mwm@ucbjade.BITNET