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Cray Co-Founder Joins Microsoft
ergo98 writes "Burton Smith, co-founder and chief scientist at Cray (The Supercomputer Company), has jumped ship. He's joining Microsoft to help them with their clustered computer initiative. Burton joins Microsoft as a technical fellow."
Microsoft also announced Windows Vista will require a Cray supercomputer to run.
I read this as "Crazy co-founder joins MS"
I was thinking "How crazy do you have to be? Crazy enough to throw a chair?"
Argh.
Third, the obligatory comment
A thousand BSODs a thousand times faster!
Looking at the new Xbox BSOD, I think they're now going for quality of quantity. So instead of a 1000 normal ones, you get one really good one.
Oh shit, my progra-- Ooooohh pretty....
Windows Cluster Edition System Requirements:
... and they will still claim it has lower TCO then Linux!
- 128 CPUs
- 100 GB RAM
- 30 square metres of floorspace
- Liquid Nitrogen cooling system
--
Don't read between the lines, the real interesting stuff
is below the line you just read.
Bill Gates: The Microsoft Side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural... Burton Smith: Is it possible to learn this power? Bill Gates: Not if you stay at Cray...
Burton was the co-founder of "Tera", the supercomputer company that purchased the old Cray division away from SGI in their 1999 restructuring.
Tera was founded to develop massively multithreaded machines. After their big purchase, they took the Cray name for continuity with Cray's old customers and products, along with the fact that it's a much more viable "commercial" supercomputing name.
They were bought by SGI in 1996, then spun off and sold to somebody else, who then renamed themselves Cray once again - so Cray is indeed the supercomputer business. Somewhere along the way their not-so-super computer business was sold off to someone else. And no, it is more than name and reputation, they sell the Cray X1 and had some clustering product coming out, which could be hurt by this departure I guess.
And that's some very interesting logic - if you are not no1, just give up.
Isn't Cray hardware and software completely proprietary? If so, no wonder MS is interested in teaming up with Burton Smith. However, as this article suggests, Linux is way ahead of the curve in this arena.
Linux may not ever truly catch on in the desktop environment, but in high-end computing, it's a proven winner.
Burton Smith took a two week training course in several stages for this:
1. The mouse - what is it? 2. How to use the mouse. 3. Learn to click [OK] without thinking. 4. Timing - measure your bogomips with the mouse hourglass icon spinning after you click [Cancel] 5. How to reboot when the mouse hourglass icon is still there after 45 minutes.
With all their cash, they can catch up in a big hurry. Also, with their market position they can bide their time. How long did it take NT/2000/XP to become somewhat respectable?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Burton Smith was co-founder of Tera Computer Company not Cray Inc. He could help MS in improving their thread architecture as well.
I think that "not so super" product you're referring to was the Sparc-based system, which became the Starfire E10K. SGI/Cray couldn't make money on it, but Sun used it to eat their lunch.
2 0and%20rude/ Evil and Rude corporation, but there are some really bright people in there working on more than Office.
Like the old IBM, Microsoft is now big enough that various pieces are running their own projects, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Windows that seamlessly clusters, where you could just add machines transparently in a manner similar to a Condor flock, would be an interesting competitor. They may be a lumbering, http://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html#evil%
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
"How long did it take NT/2000/XP to become somewhat respectable?"
I will tell you when it happens .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
and computing power. Before I get on a rant about the megahertz myth and why I love PowerPC's, the real reason Crays were powerful was their massive parallelism and the use of path optimization (premeasured cables and careful curcuit designs that made the distance electrons had to travel equal between parts of the machine) was the real reason they were a Cray.
c omputing
Just because your machine is *faster* doesn't mean it's anywhere near as powerful! How many CPU cores does your machine have? I bet the cray had more. Clockspeed means *nothing*. The reason those applications don't exist is because they would take an order of magnitude as long to calculate on your "old computer".
I recommend you do some reading on supercomputing-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super
"Supercomputers traditionally gained their speed over conventional computers through the use of innovative designs that allow them to perform many tasks in parallel, as well as complex detail engineering. They tend to be specialized for certain types of computation, usually numerical calculations, and perform poorly at more general computing tasks. Their memory hierarchy is very carefully designed to ensure the processor is kept fed with data and instructions at all times--in fact, much of the performance difference between slower computers and supercomputers is due to the memory hierarchy design and componentry. Their I/O systems tend to be designed to support high bandwidth, with latency less of an issue, because supercomputers are not used for transaction processing."
I'm a signature virus. Copy me to your signature so I can replicate, and introduce your own mutations so I can evolve.
...wouldn't you just love to spend Bill's seemingly ulimited resources to fund your pet project?
The guy is in the business of developing the biggest/fastest/floppiest computers he can. Having the deep-as-the-Pacific pockets of Microsoft to dig into can't hurt his chances of implementing all his pie-in-the-sky ideas.
Smart move if you ask me.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
The Cray XD1 uses Opteron processors and runs a variant of SUSE Linux, but uses a custom interconnect. The Cray XT3 uses Opterons and runs Linux on service nodes, and the Catamount lightweight OS on compute nodes. The Cray X1 series has proprietary CPUs, interconnect, and OS. So you're only partly right. Cray does not hesitate to use Linux where it is appropriate. However, when you are doing something like designing your own vector processor from scratch, porting Linux to it just doesn't make sense.
Linux has certainly proven itself to be a winner in lots of HPC computing applications, and Microsoft has a tough uphill battle to fight if they want to break into this market.
You do seem to be implying that Linux-based computers running commodity hardware always makes more sense than using things like proprietary interconnects. It can certainly be more cost effective, but if performance is your main goal (this is "high performance computing" after all), custom-designed hardware like the interconnect on the XT3 is always going to smoke the off-the-shelf stuff which does not exclusively target the high end.
Smith: "One more thing" is that the uniprocessor has pretty well run out of steam. Parallelism to date has been a nice strategy for HPC users and an afterthought for microprocessor vendors. Now, it is becoming a matter of business survival for all processor vendors. Parallelism is going to be taken more seriously, starting with the idea of exploiting multi-threading and multiple cores on a single problem. This is a major change. Imagine if Microsoft wanted to write Office in a parallel language. What would that language be, and what would be the architecture to support it? We don't have good answers to these questions yet'
...the other shoe drops.
Imagine if you got paid to answer that question? Which, by the way comes out as 'parallel' and 'parallel language' (don't mix them up)
"Burton joins Microsoft as a technical fellow."
Was this article submitted by Bertie Wooster?
Due to Burton's non-compete agreement with Cray, for his first year as a Microsoft Fellow, he's going to read Cryptonomicon over the company intercom and fix broken chairs in the CEO's office.
...to help develop a supercomputer version of the BSOD.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Some people have acted as if Burton Smith is the second coming of Seymour Cray. To be blunt, I just don't see it. The MTA was Smith's baby, and by most accounts it was a failure. The first version of machine was based on gallium arsenide technology and was very problematic to manufacture; less than 5 were built. Tera bought Cray largely for their CMOS design experience because they wanted to convert the MTA from GaAs to CMOS, but even that wasn't enough to fix its performance problems. While the massive multithreading capability is cute in theory, the MTA architecture simply doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to handle the scientific codes that cause people to spend 7-8 figures on a supercomputer.
It does seem weird that Burton would go to a software company like Microsoft, though. OTOH, Microsoft Research also employs Jim Gray and Gordon Bell...
This is kind of odd. Burton Smith is not really a cluster guy, although he probably knows his way around HPC (High Performance Computing). Cray is not really a cluster company (except for the system they bought from Octiga Bay deal). If you want to read a review of what Bill Gates said at the recent Supercomputing conference, check out Where is the Cluster? at Cluster Monkey.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
Truly exciting research and development is in store at Microsoft!.
Excellent place for a typo, grand-dad.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
If you did not know, a "fellow" is someone who is funded in a particular way. Usually a fellow is someone whose salary is guaranteed and who is allowed a certain budget for research, and has no obligations to produce anything. The idea is that fellowships are awarded to people who will produce the most valuable stuff if you give them free reign. Although I know of an IBM fellow who after receiving the fellowship went to lie on a beach for the rest of his days.
Now all Cray has to do is sue Microsoft because the guy is bringing over trade secrets.
Did you say, "Windows Cluster"? I've already got several in my data-center. In fact, every dekstop in my network that runs windows can be considered a "Cluster", "Cluster F#%$^" that is.... HA HA HA HA, I SO FUNNY!
Get your Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Here for FREE! - http://fedora.redhat.com
I think the "current" incarnation of Cray started when they were bought by Tera Computing, whose primary contributions to supercomputing are in massivly multi-threaded computing. Not the wimpy hyperthread that intel has - 128 complete sets of registers per processing unit, data/control flow analysing compilers to automate the extraction of threads from a program, and a huge, proprietary flat (no cache) memory architecture to make sure that the processor always has instructions and data to compute with. I remember seeing Tera at the Supercomputing 1999 conference... and they've likely improved since then.
I'd rather be flying
but whatever it is, it will be interesting. Burton Smith is a very bright guy who pioneered multithreading computing first at Denelcor, and then Tera, which bought Cray from SGI and adopted its name. He is the founder of the company which is today called Cray, but the original Cray company was, of course, founded by Seymore Cray.
Burton always reads broadly and thinks broadly. When designing a supercomputer he deals with every issue, from VLSI technology, Architecture, Operating Systems, and Compilers and Applications. He enthusiastically interacts with many experts, in many areas, and attains a very deep understanding of the issues.
Burton, best of luck at Microsoft.
Jon Solworth
I'mve not seen the XBox 360 BSoD, but the OS X equivalent fades the screen to grey and displays a translucent box (with rounded corners) in the middle of the screen telling you in four langauges that you should reboot your computer.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
isn't a founder of CRAY. He's a founder of TERA Computer who aquired CRAY in the late 90's. He's a proponent of their multithreadhed architecture - an architecture which has abysmally failed commercially. Since 1988 they've had only one actual cash sale of their system. What this probably means is that CRAY is returning to it's strength of vector supercomputers, such as the CRAY1, CRAY2, XMP, YMP, J90, SV1 and SV2 or possibly massively parallel systems such as the T3E and T3F.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
These days, a "high speed interconnect" means doing Infiniband better. Many of the exhibits at the SC2005 show were using Linux, OpenIB and Inifiniband, which is a good start - but slow, because Infiniband is generally implemented as a pseudo-bus run on top of PCI or PCI Express. The added layering adds a lot of latency, and it is latency that is killing a lot of high-end applications. That, and the fact that fat-trees saturate so easily, killing performance.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If an infinite number of slashdotters typed on an infinite number of keyboards, would they produce an original article?
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
With all their cash, they can catch up in a big hurry. Also, with their market position they can bide their time. How long did it take NT/2000/XP to become somewhat respectable?
Well....... People seriously misunderstand what it would take for Microsoft to take on Cray.
I think it is very informative to read Cray's K-10 SEC forms. The describe in pretty good detail different types of supercomputers. Microsoft (because they are not a vertically integrated computer/software manufacturer) can only really do the MMP (Massively multiparallel) supercomputers well. Indeed, most of the software for MMP supercomputing projects, such as MPI and PVM is available open source (user mode). MMP work well for certain types of tasks, but they break down for others. For other types of tasks, you are better off with a supercomputer based on high-speed interconnects between processing units. These are not like beowulf clusters. For these types of supercomuters, Cray and NEC are pretty much the only game in town. For those with a short memory, NEC is a "baby bell" (an AT&T spin-off).
So if Microsoft can't compete in the high-speed interconnect supercomputing market, what about the MMP? Can their products be competitive?
My answer is "probably not." They have several serious issues to overcome. The first is that Windows licenses are far more expensive than Linux licenses so the cost per node is likely to be higher. Most MMP supercomputers today run either some varient of Linux or UNIX. Linux tends to be run on commodity hardware while UNIX is either run on some control nodes (in some of the Cray MMP offerings), or on big iron where there may still be some performance benefit.
This therefore represents an attempt to take Windows and take on one of Linux's market strongholds. The best they can hope for is to be able to get market access to some of the peripheral units. Even there, I am not sure how successful Microsoft can be. Much of the work there is likely to depend on SFU because most of the supercomputer programmers are going to be more familiar with a POSIX development environment than an Win32 one. There might be a few VMS geezers out there who might find this helpful but in general, I just don't see it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
WEC (the manufacturing arm of AT&T) joined with Japanese investors to create NEC in exchange for a 54% stake in the company. So while the companies were legally separate, Ma Bell essentially controlled NEC as if it were a Japanese subsidiary of WEC. So while NEC might not be a baby bell in the classical sense, it is certainly to be argued that it was effectively such a company.
It never ceases to amaze me how big Ma Bell was.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Microsoft needs someone or something to get their multiple CPU and clustering architecture working halfway well. They don't seem able to do it themselves. But I predict this effort will fail too.
Despite SGI's neglect, the Cray name did and does have a lot of name recognition. So when Tera bought SGI's Cray division, they did so not just for the right to restore the Cray name on Cray products, but for the right to put the Cray name on Tera products. It's an exercise in branding. Indeed I suspect that Tera was more interested in buying the Cray brand than the Cray product line — which has never been profitable.
A more extreme case of branding is Atari, which is now the name of a French game software company that has no real connection with Nolan Bushnell's original company.
Take one Microsoft hellbent on becoming the only game in town even if they are sued by various governments around the world. Add one supercomputer corporation. Add one easily manipulated United Nations to strike out any metioning of Open-Source Software. Mix in a little Big Brother and voila! You've got yourself the worlds largest seriving of "oh crap."
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.