Editing Seymour Cray (section)

===Control Data Corporation===
Cray, along with [[William Norris (CEO)|William Norris]], later became dissatisfied with ERA, then spun off as Sperry Rand. In 1957, they founded a new company, [[Control Data Corporation]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/william-c-norris-418405.html | title=William C. Norris | work=[[The Independent]] | date=1 October 2006 | access-date=10 November 2017 | author=Campbell-Kelly, Martin | archive-date=10 November 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171110224957/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/william-c-norris-418405.html | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="nytimes">{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/business/23norris.html | title=William C. Norris, 95, Founder of an Early Rival to I.B.M., Dies | work=[[The New York Times]] | date=23 August 2006 | access-date=10 November 2017 | author=Markoff, John}}</ref>

By 1960 he had completed the design of the [[CDC 1604]], an improved low-cost [[UNIVAC 1103|ERA 1103]] that had impressive performance for its price.<ref name=Scar>{{cite web |url=https://www.scaruffi.com/science/elec4.html |title=The BUNCH}}</ref> Even as the CDC 1604 was starting to ship to customers in 1960, Cray had already moved on to designing other computers. He first worked on the design of an upgraded version (the [[CDC 3000 series]]), but company management wanted these machines targeted toward "business and commercial" data processing for average customers. Cray did not enjoy working on such "mundane" machines, constrained to design for low-cost construction, so CDC could sell many of them. His desire was to "produce the largest [fastest] computer in the world". So after some basic design work on the CDC 3000 series, he turned that over to others and went on to work on the [[CDC 6600]]. Nonetheless, several special features of the 6600 first started to appear in the 3000 series.

Although in terms of hardware the 6600 was not on the leading edge,{{fact|date=April 2022}} Cray invested considerable effort into the design of the machine in an attempt to enable it to run as fast as possible. Unlike most high-end projects, Cray realized that there was considerably more to performance than simple processor speed, that [[input/output|I/O]] bandwidth had to be maximized as well in order to avoid "starving" the processor of data to crunch. He later noted, "Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system."<ref name="IEEECS" />

The 6600 was the first commercial supercomputer, outperforming everything then available by a wide margin. While expensive, for those that needed the fastest computer available there was nothing else on the market that could compete.<ref name=AcadBook>"Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three times faster than the next fastest machine of its day, the IBM 7030 Stretch." {{cite book  |title=Making a World of Difference: Engineering Ideas into Reality
|url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0309312655  |isbn=978-0309312653 |publisher=National Academy of Engineering |date=2014}}</ref><ref>"In 1964 Cray's CDC 6600 replaced Stretch as the fastest computer on earth." {{cite book | title=Expert Systems, Knowledge Engineering for Human Replication | url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1291595090 | isbn=978-1291595093 | author=Andreas Sofroniou | date=2013| publisher=Lulu.com }}</ref>  When other companies (namely [[IBM]]) attempted to create machines with similar performance, they stumbled ([[IBM 7030 Stretch]]). In the 6600, Cray had solved the critical design problem of "imprecise interrupts",<ref>
{{Citation
 | last = Smotherman
 | first = Mark
 | title = IBM Stretch (7030) — Aggressive Uniprocessor Parallelism
 | year = 2010
 | url = http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/stretch.html
 | access-date = 25 May 2013
}}
</ref> which was largely responsible for IBM's failure. He did this by replacing I/O interrupts with a polled request issued by one of ten so-called peripheral processors, which were built-in mini-computers that did all transfers in and out of the 6600's central memory. The following [[CDC 7600]] even improved the speed advantage by a factor of five.<ref name=X7600>
{{cite web
 | title= CDC 7600
 | url= http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/craytalk/sld052.htm
 | access-date= 2017-10-19
 | url-status= dead
 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160515062016/http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/craytalk/sld052.htm
 | archive-date= 2016-05-15
}}
</ref>

In 1963, in a ''Business Week'' article announcing the CDC 6600, Seymour Cray clearly expressed an idea that is often misattributed to [[Herb Grosch]] as so-called [[Grosch's law]]:

{{Quote|text=Computers should obey a square law&nbsp;— when the price doubles, you should get at least four times as much speed.|sign=Seymour Cray|source="Computers get faster than ever", Business Week (31 August 1963): p. 28.}}

====CDC's Chippewa Falls laboratory====
During this period Cray had become increasingly annoyed at what he saw as interference from CDC management. Cray always demanded an absolutely quiet work environment with a minimum of management overhead, but as the company grew he found himself constantly interrupted by middle managers who&nbsp;– according to Cray&nbsp;– did little but gawk and use him as a sales tool by introducing him to prospective customers.

Cray decided that in order to continue development he would have to move from St. Paul, far enough that it would be too long a drive for a "quick visit" and long-distance telephone charges would be just enough to deter most calls, yet close enough that real visits or board meetings could be attended without too much difficulty. After some debate, Norris backed him and set up a new laboratory on land Cray owned in his hometown of Chippewa Falls. Part of the reason for the move may also have to do with Cray's worries about an impending [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear war]], which he felt made the Twin Cities a serious safety concern.{{sfn|Murray|1997|p=[https://archive.org/details/supermenstory00murr/page/82 82]}} His house, built a few hundred yards from the new CDC laboratory, included a huge [[fallout shelter|bomb shelter]].{{sfn|Murray|1997|p=[https://archive.org/details/supermenstory00murr/page/86 86]}}

The new Chippewa Lab was set up during the middle of the 6600 project, although it does not seem to have delayed the project. After the 6600 shipped, the successor [[CDC 7600]] system was the next product to be developed in Chippewa Falls, offering peak computational speeds of ten times the 6600. The failed follow-on to the 7600, the [[CDC 8600]], was the project that finally ended his run of successes at CDC in 1972.

Although the 6600 and 7600 had been huge successes in the end, both projects had almost bankrupted the company while they were being designed. The 8600 was running into similar difficulties and Cray eventually decided that the only solution was to start over fresh. This time Norris was not willing to take the risk, and another project within the company, the [[CDC STAR-100]], seemed to be progressing more smoothly. Norris said he was willing to keep the project alive at a low level until the STAR was delivered, at which point full funding could be put into the 8600. Cray was unwilling to work under these conditions and left the company.{{sfn|Murray|1997|pp=[https://archive.org/details/supermenstory00murr/page/116 116-117]}}