Cray’s Legacy

Although he died a decade ago, supercomputer developer Seymour Cray’s legacy lives on through the technology he developed at SRC Computers Inc.

The Colorado Springs-based company has spent more than $60 million to bring the power of a supercomputer to a much broader market.

Much of its work for the past 10 years has been without fanfare. SRC started out trying to develop a high-performance computer using off-the-shelf microprocessors, the brains of most personal computers. The company instead developed a technology that combines microprocessors with a type of semiconductor that can be reprogrammed on the fly to do a specific task or sequence of tasks.

“If you can do this with one processor, you have the power of 100 microprocessors, so it makes for a smaller supercomputer that runs cooler. That allows you to have a much more powerful computer in a smaller space,” said SRC President Jon Huppenthal.

The smaller size and new technology have allowed SRC to move beyond selling only supercomputers that go for more than $1 million each. Its product line now also includes desktop computers costing $50,000 and mobile devices that start at $24,000.

“These desktop computers will be running applications beyond Microsoft Office. We see it being used in the financial industry, in medicine for joint analysis or drug discovery,” Huppenthal said. The mobile devices are small computers installed in unmanned drone aircraft used by the military.

The technology that SRC and about a dozen others are trying to develop “is going to be transformational at the high end” of computing, said Carl Claunch, vice president of research for Gartner Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based technology research and consulting firm.

SRC is “carving out a very interesting niche that is just a little below the top of the market,” Claunch said. “There is a lot of money chasing this (market) because it’s an area where you can rapidly move the technology forward and get out to market.”

The key to SRC’s technology is in the software — making the reprogrammable chip easy enough to use that most computer engineers can do the reprogramming, said Duncan Buell, chairman of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of South Carolina.

The technology provides a speed improvement with the same level of programming, said Buell, who is leading one of three teams at colleges that found SRC’s technology “successful” in evaluations this year financed by Defense Department grants.

The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., is using one of SRC’s top-of-the-line computers to determine how effectively it can analyze and classify radar signals Navy ships detect to determine whether they are a threat, such as a missile trying to target a ship.

“The computers made at SRC are truly amazing. Their machine is second to none,” said Douglas Fouts, the school’s associate dean of research and an electrical- and computer-engineering professor. He noted he isn’t speaking for the school.

SRC designs its computers, and they’re manufactured by other U.S. companies; the company also has a small software operation in Minnesota.

SRC’s technology eventually may be used in ordinary personal computers — the company is talking with PC manufacturers about using its processors in their high-end products. Huppenthal declined to identify the PC makers. He said it might be 10-20 years before the technology starts showing up in consumer products.

“They have maxed out the speed of the microprocessor, so now they have gone to two microprocessors,” Huppenthal said. “We’re not a consumer product yet, but we’ll get there. In the end, I believe most desktop microprocessors will use this technology.”

Don’t expect to find SRC machines at Best Buy or Circuit City; Huppenthal said the company will hit the big time when its technology is incorporated into products made by the household names in the computer industry — Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard.

SRC plans to seek additional funds from outside investors to expand its marketing efforts, but Huppenthal declined to say how much the company will seek. Eventually, SRC may go public to allow investors to cash out, but that isn’t likely for two or three years.

The additional funds probably would fuel an expansion that would nearly double SRC’s 50-person staff and boost its revenue tenfold, Huppenthal said. The privately held company doesn’t disclose its revenue or other financial information, he said.

SRC started out trying to revolutionize computing in a much different way but with the same goal — a less costly high-performance machine. The company’s name stands for Cray’s initials — Seymour Roger Cray — the father of the supercomputer industry.

Cray started SRC in 1996 to come up with a new type of supercomputer using off-the-shelf microprocessors. His previous company, Cray Computer Corp., ended up in bankruptcy a year earlier amid technical problems in developing its machines.

SRC was just weeks old before Cray was involved in an auto crash that led to his death a month later. Soon after, officials found that the new Intel microprocessor around which he had designed his latest machine wasn’t going to make it out of the lab.

“We all felt a sense of loss (from Cray’s death), but we didn’t feel we would lose our jobs, too,” Huppenthal said. “After the accident and before he died, our board members had confirmed that they were committed to the technology and would keep funding it.”

During the past 10 years, investors led by SRC Chairman D. James Guzy kept that promise. Guzy was ranked this year by Forbes magazine on its “Midas List” as one of the nation’s top 100 investors in technology and has funded several semiconductor startups. He worked with Cray at Control Data Corp. and was a founding director of Intel Corp.

SRC delivered its first computer that used a less-advanced Intel chip three years later to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. SRC found that the microprocessor it was using was too slow, but users loved its ability to be reprogrammed.

The company solved problems with speed and reprogramming the machine by pairing the off-the-shelf microprocessor with a reprogrammable chip. That allowed software engineers using common computer languages to change circuit designs by just installing new software.

“After five years, we took what we learned and started down a new path,” Huppenthal said. “We had the basis for a good idea and thought it would be successful, so we headed down that new path. It was a technology that could cause a shift in the way that computing is done.”

That shift in strategy is a key part of Cray’s legacy — resulting from a corporate culture he set down before he died, Huppenthal said.

“As we moved on (after Cray’s death), we did something he was wellknown for doing — starting with a clean sheet of paper,” Huppenthal said. “The lessons we learned with Seymour are still with us. While Seymour is not here, his influence lives on.”

SRC has sold systems to customers in the intelligence industry, university researchers and defense contractors, many operating since 2002.

SEYMOUR CRAY’S COMPUTING LEGACY

1988: Seymour Cray moves his latest project to Colorado Springs.

1989: Cray Research Inc., founded by Seymour Cray in 1972, spins off the project into a new company called Cray Computer Corp.

1995: Cray Computer files for bankruptcy.

1996: Seymour Cray starts SRC Computers Inc. in August. He suffers massive injuries in a September car crash and dies a month later.

1999: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Energy Department research facility in Tennessee, becomes SRC’s first customer.

2001: SRC redesigns technology used in its computers to pair offthe-shelf microprocessors with semiconductors that can be reprogrammed on the fly. The company rolls out its first products.

2002: The company makes first sales of its desktop systems to George Washington University, Naval Postgraduate School and National Security Agency.

2004: SRC-6, the company’s first high-end machine, is delivered to George Washington University, the company’s first “unclassified” customer.

2005: The company introduces SRC-7, its second-generation machine, as “the most powerful, and most programmer-friendly, reconfigurable general purpose computing system on the market.” SRC-7 remains in the testing phase. The company delivers its first portable systems to the U.S. Air Force.

2006: The company delivers first mobile server to the Air Force. The company will ship first SRC-7 late this year.

2007: The company will seek an undisclosed amount of investment to beef up marketing and research.

SOURCE: Gazette research