I came across this presentation that Gordon Bell (yes, that Gordon Bell) gave in 1997 on Seymour Cray.
The most interesting bits came on the last slide:
“Seymour built simple machines — he knew that if each step was simple, it would be fast.”
“When he was told that Apple had just bought a Cray to help design the next Mac, Seymour commented that he had just bought a Mac to design the next Cray.”
I take some issue with the first remark. Although Cray’s machines were arguably simple architecturally, they were not simple to manufacture. But the second quote just made me laugh out loud. I’m sure Apple had a good reason to own a Cray (most likely to emulate new hardware before silicon had taped out), but still…
Posted by pmk at July 23, 2003 6:08 PM | TrackBack