Computing · 1976

Cray-1

A horseshoe-shaped vector supercomputer running at 160 megaFLOPS.

Seymour Cray's Cray-1 used vector processing and short wire lengths for speed. About 80 were sold, making it the most successful supercomputer of its era.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

CDC 6600 1964
Integrated circuit 1958

What it led to 1

ASCI Red 1996

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Fastest computer in the world Latest: 2.2×10¹⁸ operations per second (2026) Source: Wikipedia: List of fastest computers; Wikipedia: History of supercomputing

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6

Fastest supercomputer Latest: 1.81B GFLOP/s (2025) Source: Our World in Data