for other uses see cray disambiguation . cray inc. type public traded as nasdaq cray founded 1972 ; 44 years ago 1972 as cray research inc. current corporate entity founded in 1987 ; 29 years ago 1987 as tera computer company . founder seymour cray headquarters seattle washington united states key people peter j. ungaro products supercomputers revenue us 724.7 million 2015 1 operating income us 41.0 million 2015 1 net income us 27.5 million 2015 1 total assets us 694.2 million 2015 1 us 651.4 million 2014 2 us 603.366 million 2013 3 us 510.314 million 2012 3 total equity us 492.5 million 2015 1 owner cray inc. number of employees 1 282 dec 2015 1 website cray.com cray inc. is an american supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in seattle washington . 1 it also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics . 4 cray manufactures its products in chippewa falls wisconsin where its founder seymour cray was born and raised . the company also has offices in st. paul minnesota the site of its original headquarters under seymour cray and numerous other sales service engineering and r & d locations around the world . 5 6 several cray supercomputer systems are listed in the top500 which ranks the most powerful supercomputers in the world . 7 the number of cray systems on the list varies from year to year . the company s predecessor cray research inc. cri was founded in 1972 by computer designer seymour cray . 8 seymour cray went on to form the spin off cray computer corporation ccc in 1989 which went bankrupt in 1995 while cray research was bought by sgi the next year . cray inc. was formed in 2000 when tera computer company purchased the cray research inc. business from sgi and adopted the name of its acquisition . 9 contents 1 company history 1.1 background 1950 to 1972 1.2 cray research inc. and cray computer corporation 1972 to 1996 1.3 silicon graphics 1996 to 2000 1.4 cray inc. 2000 to present 2 references 3 further reading 4 external links company history edit background 1950 to 1972 edit seymour cray began working in the computing field in 1950 when he joined engineering research associates era in saint paul minnesota . there he helped to create the era 1103 . era eventually became part of univac and began to be phased out . he left the company in 1960 a few years after former era employees set up control data corporation cdc . he initially worked out of the cdc headquarters in minneapolis . he eventually set up a lab at his home in chippewa falls wisconsin about 85 miles to the east . cray had a string of successes at cdc including the cdc 6600 and cdc 7600 . cray research inc. and cray computer corporation 1972 to 1996 edit cray 2 supercomputer when cdc ran into financial difficulties in the late 1960s development funds for his follow on cdc 8600 became scarce and when he was told the project would have to be put on hold in 1972 cray left to form his own company cray research inc. with research and development facilities in chippewa falls and the business headquarters in minneapolis . the company s first product the cray 1 supercomputer was a major success because it was faster than all other computers at the time . the first system was sold within a month for us 8.8 million . seymour cray continued working this time on the cray 2 though it only ended up being marginally faster than the cray x mp developed by another team at the company . cray soon left the ceo position to become an independent contractor . he started a new vlsi technology lab for the cray 2 in boulder colorado cray laboratories in 1979 which closed in 1982 ; undaunted cray later headed a similar spin off in 1989 cray computer corporation ccc in colorado springs where he worked on the cray 3 project the first attempt at major use of gallium arsenide gaas semiconductors in computing . however the changing political climate collapse of the warsaw pact and the end of the cold war resulted in poor sales only one cray 3 was delivered and the company fell by the wayside eventually filing for bankruptcy in 1995 . ccc s remains then began cray s final corporation src computers inc. which still exists . cray research continued development along a separate line of computers originally with lead designer steve chen and the cray x mp . after chen s departure the cray y mp cray c90 and cray t90 were developed on the original cray 1 architecture but achieved much greater performance via multiple additional processors faster clocks and wider vector pipes . the uncertainty of the cray 2 project gave rise to a number of cray object code compatible crayette firms scientific computer systems scs american supercomputer supertek and perhaps one other firm . these firms did not mean to compete against cray and therefore attempted less expensive slower cmos versions of the x mp with the release of the cos operating system scs and the cft fortran compiler ; they also considered national labs lanl llnl developed ctss operating system as well before caving in to the tide of unixes . cray t3e processor board a series of massively parallel computers from thinking machines kendall square research intel supercomputing systems division ncube maspar and meiko scientific took over the 1980s high performance market . at first cray research denigrated such approaches by complaining that developing software to effectively use the machines was difficult a true complaint in the era of the illiac iv but becoming less so each day . cray eventually realized that the approach was likely the only way forward and started a five year project to capture the lead in this area the plan s result was the dec alpha based cray t3d and cray t3e series which left cray as the only remaining supercomputer vendor in the market besides nec by 2000 . most sites with a cray installation were considered a member of the exclusive club of cray operators . cray computers were considered quite prestigious because crays were extremely expensive machines and the number of units sold was small compared to ordinary mainframes . this perception extended to countries as well to boost the perception of exclusivity cray research s marketing department had promotional neckties made with a mosaic of tiny national flags illustrating the club of cray operating countries . computer history museum cray 1 30th anniversary recorded presentation 2006 new vendors introduced small supercomputers known as minisupercomputers as opposed to superminis during the late 1980s and early 1990s which out competed low end cray machines in the market . the convex computer series as well as a number of small scale parallel machines from companies like pyramid technology and alliant computer systems were particularly popular . one such vendor was supertek whose s 1 machine was an air cooled cmos implementation of the x mp processor . cray purchased supertek in 1990 and sold the s 1 as the cray xms but the machine proved problematic ; meanwhile their not yet completed s 2 a y mp clone was later offered as the cray y mp el later becoming the el90 series which started to sell in reasonable numbers in 1991 92 to mostly smaller companies notably in the oil exploration business . this line evolved into the cray j90 and eventually the cray sv1 in 1998 . in december 1991 cray purchased some of the assets of floating point systems another minisuper vendor that had moved into the file server market with its sparc based model 500 line . 10 these smp machines scaled up to 64 processors and ran a modified version of sun microsystems solaris . cray set up cray research superservers inc. later the business systems division to sell this system as the cray s mp later replacing it with the cray cs6400 . in spite of these machines being some of the most powerful available when applied to appropriate workloads cray was never very successful in this market possibly due to it being so foreign to their existing market niche . ccc was building the cray 3 sss when it went into chapter 11 in march 1995 . silicon graphics 1996 to 2000 edit cray research merged with silicon graphics sgi in february 1996 . at the time the industry was highly critical of the move noting that there was little overlap between the two companies either in markets or technology . founder seymour cray died as a result of a traffic accident later that year . sgi immediately sold off the superservers business to sun who quickly turned the ultrasparc based starfire project then under development into the extremely successful enterprise 10000 range of servers . sgi did use a number of cray technologies in their attempt to move from the graphics workstation market into supercomputing . key among these was the use of the cray developed hippi data bus and details of the interconnects used in the t3 series . sgi s long term strategy was to merge their high end server line with cray s product lines in two phases code named sn1 and sn2 sn standing for scalable node . the sn1 was intended to replace the t3e and sgi origin 2000 systems and later became the sn mips or sgi origin 3000 architecture . the sn2 was originally intended to unify all high end supercomputer product lines including the t90 into a single architecture . this goal was never achieved before sgi divested itself of the cray business and the sn2 name was later associated with the sn ia or sgi altix 3000 architecture . under sgi ownership one new cray model line the sv1 was launched in 1998 . this was a clustered smp vector processor architecture developed from j90 technology . sgi set up a separate cray research business unit in august 1999 in preparation for detachment . on march 2 2000 the unit was sold to tera computer company . tera computer company was then renamed cray inc. when the deal closed on april 4 . cray inc. 2000 to present edit after the tera merger the tera mta system was relaunched as the cray mta 2 . this was not a commercial success and shipped to only two customers . cray inc. also unsuccessfully badged the nec sx 6 supercomputer as the cray sx 6 and acquired exclusive rights to sell the sx 6 in the u.s. canada and mexico . in 2002 cray inc. announced their first new model the cray x1 combined architecture vector mpp supercomputer . previously known as the sv2 the x1 is the end result of the earlier sn2 concept originated during the sgi years . in may 2004 cray was announced to be one of the partners in the u.s. department of energy s fastest computer in the world project to build a 50 teraflops machine for the oak ridge national laboratory . cray was sued in 2002 by isothermal systems research for patent infringement . the suit claimed that cray used isr s patented technology in the development of the cray x1 . 11 the lawsuit was settled in 2003 . 12 as of november 2004 the cray x1 had a maximum measured performance of 5.9 teraflops being the 29th fastest supercomputer in the world . since then the x1 has been superseded by the x1e with faster dual core processors . on october 4 2004 the company announced the cray xd1 range of entry level supercomputers which use dual core 64 bit amd opteron cpus running linux . this system was previously known as the octigabay 12k before cray s acquisition of that company . the xd1 provided one xilinx virtex ii pro field programmable gate array fpga with each node