The condition of gravely injured supercomputer pioneer Seymour Cray deteriorated sharply on Friday, and he died early Saturday morning at a hospital near his home in Colorado Springs. He was 71 and had been in the Penrose Community Hospital in Colorado Springs since he suffered severe head and neck injuries in a three-car accident on Interstate 25 near the Air Force Academy. Authorities said his Jeep Cherokee rolled three times after it was hit by another car. The cause of death was given as complications from massive head injuries. After Army service in World War II, he learned about digital computers after graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1951. Pointed to Engineering Research Associates by a professor after he graduated, he met John Von Neumann, the mathematician described as the father of the modern computer. While credit is given to IBM for inventing Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC, during the 1970s, computer historians say Cray’s computers were always designed along RISC lines. Engineering Research ended up as part of Remington Rand Co and then Sperry Rand Inc, and Cray’s legendary impatience with corporate bureaucracies and management caused him to jump ship and join William Norris, Engineering Research’s founder, who had just started Control Data Corp. There, he led the design of the CDC 1604, the first commercial computer to replace large valves with transistors, and was soon putting IBM Corp’s nose out of joint in a big way with the CDC 66 00, which was the first serious scientific supercomputer. He left Control Data to form Cray Research Inc in 1972. The two firms were responsible for the only serious US monolithic supercomputers. Like Dr Gene Amdahl, he always contended that the best way to design a computer was within a single mind. For recreation, he designed and sailed yachts, typically a new one each summer. At the end of the summer, he would immolate his pride and joy in a ceremonial inferno.
