This book describes the development and use of supercomputers in the period 1960 - 1996, a time that can be called the Seymour Cray Era. For more than three decades, Cray's computer designs were seen as the yardstick against which all other efforts were measured. Initially, this yardstick was sheer computing speed. However, the supercomputer world gradually became more complex and other factors became equally important.
The initial development of supercomputers was commissioned and financed by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, which had huge computational needs in connection with nuclear weapons development. The computers designed by Cray satisfied those needs, while these computers were also sold to a few dozen other big research organizations and weather agencies. From the 98 s, a variety of companies started to compete with the Cray designs by offering supercomputers that used a new architectural approach, MPP: massively parallel processing. This new architecture, based on using tens of thousands of relatively simple microprocessors, subsequently began to dominate high-performance computing and marked the end of the Seymour Cray Era.

This book is important reading for anyone working in the area of high-performance computing, providing essential historical context for the work of a legendary pioneer and the computers he became famous for designing. It will also be valuable to students of computing history and, more generally, to readers interested in the history of science and technology. For advanced students, the book illustrates how innovation in its very essence is a socio-technical process: not just a matter of developing the "best technology," but also of making appropriate choices concerning the interaction of human and technical factors in product design.

Donald Angus MacKenzie is a professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His work constitutes a crucial contribution to the field of science and technology studies. He has also developed research in the field of social studies of finance. He has undertaken widely cited work on the history of statistics, eugenics, nuclear weapons, computing and finance, among other things.

In 1978 he earned a PhD from the University of Edinburgh for his thesis on the development of statistical theory in Britain.

In August 2006, MacKenzie was awarded the Chancellor's Award from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, for his contributions to the field of science and technology studies. He is also the winner of the 1993 Robert K. Merton Award of the American Sociological Association and the 2005 John Desmond Bernal Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science among many others.

Prologue
Preface
Acknowledgements
The Dawn of the Supercomputer Era
Exploring Architectural Variety
Losing and Regaining Focus: From CDC to CRI
Diverging Needs and Machines
Broadening the Customer Base
Changing Dynamics of the Supercomputer World
Increased Competition
High-end Versus Low-end
The Dawn of a New Era
Revisiting the Megaflops Quest: A Sociotechnical Dynamic
Epilogue: The End of the Seymour Cray Era
List of Interviewees
Bibliography
Authors’ Biography/Index