OT- Re: [rescue] cray sx-6

[Dan Sikorski]

On Tue, 2001-10-09 at 22:36, Claude.W wrote:

> I was told that NEC supercomputers were far superior to the Cray equivalents
> in cost/performance. With the high cost of R&D I can only imagine Cray was
> being "killed" by the high performance and low cost of the NEC
> competitor...and they were "loosing the battle" in these hard economic
> times...

The high cost of R&D is easily offset by selling only a few units.  They
won't "lose the battle" in "these hard economic times." Cray's biggest
customer is the government (specifically NSA) and the government isn't
going out of buisness anytime soon.  The NSA is the first customer to
buy all of Cray's products, and probably always will be.  Buisnesses may
have low sales and therefore have budget cuts, but I'm pretty sure that
i'm still paying taxes.  (and yes, there can still be budget cuts, but
it doesn't seem that the NSA cuts corners, nor should they.)  

> Now it would make sense that Cray R&D would be pointed in another direction
> (but what?) or simply eliminated and perhaps the CRAY line dropped
> eventually??? But thats just my speculation...

Cray R&D is working on the next two or three lines of supers.  Cray is,
and always has been a supercomputing company.  What else would they do
R&D on?  They could easily integrate NEC technologies into their
products, but i don't think there's going to be any radical change in
what Cray does.  The supercomputer market isn't quite what the PeeCee
market is.  It doesn't change (as much) overnight.

	-Dan Sikorski