Nobody but Us: A History of Cray Research's Software and the Building of the World's Fastest Supercomputer
Nobody but Us: A History of Cray Research's Software and the Building of the World's Fastest Supercomputer
Book Two of "The Revolutionizers"
About the Book
When second place meant people died, the answer was Cray Research.
When laboratories competed for the few scientists with Top Secret clearances, the best "bragging rights" brought in the best scientists. The ultimate bragging right was Seymour Cray's first and only CRAY-1 supercomputer. Each lab shot down the other's funding. In a boss move, Cray gave away the computer. The second customer walked in and paid cash. Accomplishing the apparently-impossible became the Cray Research mystique.
Supercomputing Comes From Codebreaking
Early radio technology created an invisible battlefield where codebreaking meant lives saved. Military cryptanalysis became the direct path to supercomputing. With lives at stake, existential pressure created cognitive frameworks that made the impossible routine.
How We Dealt With Overwhelming Complexity
A Cray Research veteran teaches you how pioneers handled overwhelming complexity: pattern recognition anticipating Midway, systems thinking inventing magnetic core memory. Experience from one domain, applied in a new way, shaped supercomputing. These same skills (pattern recognition, cross-domain connections, different perspectives) form the foundation of modern Artificial Intelligence.
Through historical narrative and technical examples (debugging unreproducible problems, optimizing tightly-constrained hardware, bare-metal skills now crucial for AI), you develop the same abilities. You will learn to treat mastery not as a linear path, but as cycles building on previous cycles of mastery.
Today's Overwhelming Complexity
The Cold War stakes are gone but overwhelming complexity intensifies. The generation that developed these frameworks and devices is retiring and passing away. This knowledge has never been systematically transmitted to the next generation until now.
The path to Cray Research-level wizardry exists. It has been traveled. You can travel it today.
About the Author
Table of Contents
- Part I:The First Invisible Battlefield (Radio Intelligence)
- Chapter 1.The Human Cost of Staying First
- Contrasting Fates Determined by Radio Intelligence (1941-1943)
- The Invisible Battlefield Emerges (1903-1905)
- Second Invisible Battleground Emerges (1949)
- Human Cost Induces “Wizard Thinking”
- Connecting the Invisible Threads
- Summary
- Chapter 2.The Pattern Creators
- Territorial Patterns
- Evolving Radio Technology
- Communication Patterns
- Financial Patterns
- Summary
- Chapter 3.Decoding the Bootleggers
- Elizebeth Friedman
- West Coast Unit
- William Friedman
- Cryptanalytic Unit
- Sinking of I’m Alone
- The Friedman Trove
- Summary
- Chapter 4.Decoding the Naval Disarmament Conference
- Vice Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō
- Russian Pacific Fleet Depredations
- First Wartime Radio Traffic Analysis
- Fourteen Points to Port and Annihilate
- Arms Race
- Age of Sail
- Pre-Dreadnaught Battleships
- Two-Ocean Navy
- Washington Naval Conference
- Teapot Dome
- Strategic Imperative
- Summary
- Chapter 5.Flying Against the Imperial Japanese Navy
- United States Naval Academy
- Year-End Traditions
- Naval Air Station Pensacola
- Assassination
- Carrier Qualification
- Rabaul
- Medal of Honor
- Final Flight
- Great Friends
- Summary
- Chapter 6.Was Location “AF” Midway, or the Aleutian Islands?
- Planned Attack on “AF”
- Red
- Blue
- December 4, 1941
- December 8, 1941
- Chester Nimitz
- March 9, 1942
- Rochefort’s Big Break
- Chicago Tribune
- Presidential Authorization
- Disastrous Mental Models
- Summary
- Chapter 7.Hedy Lamarr, the Mother of WiFi
- Spread Spectrum
- The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
- Barbara La Marr
- Hollywood
- Fritz Mandl
- Waves
- Player Piano
- Summary
- Full-Power Takeoff
- Chapter 8.Profile of the “Real Programmer”
- A Debugging Skill
- Coding Challenges
- Fizz Buzz
- Recursion
- Whiteboard Interview
- Insecurities
- Profile Describing a Real Programmer
- Track and Field
- Fizz Buzz Practice
- Summary
- Chapter 9.Think Like a Computer
- Primary
- Popular Electronics
- Turing Tumble
- Crypto
- Flow
- Journey Versus Destination
- Summary
- Chapter 10.The Basics With a Side of Crypto
- Prepare For Engine Run-Up
- Crypto Problem
- What We Will Learn
- The Library
- Numbering Systems
- Logical Operations
- Ones’ Complement Arithmetic
- Complementary Complements
- The Calculation
- Learning
- Summary
- Chapter 11.Design an Algorithm in Your Head
- Donald Knuth
- Conversion
- Algorithm
- Decimal to Hexadecimal
- Hexadecimal to Decimal
- Base 62
- Summary
- Chapter 12.What Can the NSA Teach Us About Debugging?
- Digital Computers
- Intuition
- Superpowers
- Summary
- Chapter 13.Problem in a Box
- Once More
- Loud Whiteboards
- Fitting the Problem Into a Box
- Task Main Loop
- Summary
- Chapter 14.Vacuum Tube Blackjack
- What This Deep Dive Teaches
- Early Computing
- Aberdeen Proving Ground
- Epic Folklore
- LGP-30 Programming
- Summary
- Chapter 15.Running the Numbers
- Porting Blackjack
- User Guide
- ROAR
- Infinite Loop
- Problem Analysis
- Problem in a Box
- Reflecting
- Beyond Blackjack
- Computing History Archives
- Warming Up the LGP-30
- When It Fits
- Summary
- Chapter 16.Project Whirlwind
- U.S.S. Lexington
- Flight Instructor
- Fire Control
- Wind Tunnel Simulation
- War Ends
- The Whirlwind Computer
- Summary
- Chapter 17.Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
- The Forgotten Best Seller
- Bug Collectors
- Around the World Nonstop
- George Valley
- Whirlwind
- Whirlwind II and IBM 701
- Production Model
- Lorenz Center
- Margaret Hamilton
- Send Man to the Moon
- Summary
- Chapter 18.Engineering Research Associates
- See Saw
- Index of Coincidence
- Analysis of A Single Text
- Message Comparison
- Near War’s End
- Sole Source Contract
- National Security Agency
- Purpose of Analytical Machines
- Summary
- Chapter 19.Control Data Corporation
- Twelve Defectors
- Little Character
- Office Desk
- CDC 6600
- Supercomputing
- Chippewa Falls
- Summary
- Chapter 20.Cray Research
- John Rollwagen
- George Hanson
- Serial Two
- Cray Design
- The Cray Style
- Summary
- Chapter 21.My First CRAY-1
- Nobody but Us
- The Trade Secret
- The Cray Way
- CRAY-1 Arrives
- Bare Metal
- Memory Banks
- Summary
- Chapter 22.Big Iron
- Fast Forward
- Scalar Logical
- Scalar Shift
- Special Register Values
- Listing One
- Instruction Buffer
- Line Three
- Scalar Merge
- Listing Three
- Functional Unit Segmentation
- Mentoring and Credibility
- Summary
- Wyoming Blizzard
- San Remo Agreement
- Chapter 23.Software Development
- Vectorizing Software
- Seymour’s Memo
- On-Line Tape Software
- Summary
- Chapter 24.My NSA Mug Shot
- But Where…?
- Safe Arrival
- Round Tapes
- Channel Extender
- Horseshoes
- Patterns in the Noise
- Channel Commands
- Spotting Weirdness
- Deliberate Practice
- Developing Expertise
- Summary
- Chapter 25.It Was Nothing, They Said
- Dash Pig
- Leap Day
- Y2K Bug
- Perspective
- The Wizards
- Magnetic Tape
- Deadline
- Modern Legacy Code
- Summary
- Chapter 26.Ducky Day
- The Cray Style
- Octal
- Storytelling
- Summary
- Chapter 27.The Transitive Property of Keeping Your Mouth Shut
- Minnesota
- Valley Girls
- Transitive Property
- 9-Track
- One More Play
- My Turn to Teach
- Equality
- Summary
- Chapter 28.The Veil
- Initial Visit
- Saudi Hospitality
- Feast
- Summary
- Chapter 29.Oil Across the Water
- Revisionist History
- Grapevine
- Standard Oil
- The Relationship
- Video and References
- Summary
- Chapter 30.Desert Shield
- Eastern Province
- Notary Public
- Summary
- Chapter 31.Remembering “Scuzzy”
- Pre-Release IBM Hardware
- Software Division
- Summary
- Chapter 32.Gate Keeping
- Burnout
- Gate Keeping
- The Unix Guru
- On the Shoulders of Giants
- Dragon Wrangling
- Summary
- Chapter 33.Imposter Syndrome
- Imposter Syndrome
- Different Way of Thinking
- Software Training
- Paying it Forward
- Wizard Thinking
- The Dark Side
- Shoulders of Giants
- The Gatekeeper
- Prohibition-Era John Scarne
- Resources
- What Do You Hear?
- Chapter 34.The Road Less Traveled
- Cross-Domain Thinking
- Constraint Transformation
- The Path Taken
- The “Revolutionizer” Patterns
- Chapter 35.The Wizard’s Mirror
- Extracting Patterns from History
- The Cyclic Nature of Mastery
- Recursive Lesson Application
- Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
- What Do You Hear?
- The Cyclic Journey
- Chapter 36.The Search for Scientists
- Science as Plunder
- Forced Labor
- IG Farben Company
- IG Farben Auschwitz
- The Osenberg List
- Chapter 37.Lady of the Lake Discovers Bomb Test
- Lavrentiy Beria
- Not the Real Story
- Mysterious History
- Motivation Behind Operation Paperclip
- Additional Reading
- Chapter 38.Camelot, the German Rocket Scientists at Peenemünde
- NASA Marshall
- Rocket Test Stand
- Resort on Rügen
- Operation Hydra
- Mittelwerk
- Castle Varlar
- Battle of the Bulge
- Chapter 39.Mittelwerk Extermination
- Treaty of Versailles
- Heinrich Himmler
- Operation Barbarossa
- SS Takeover of Peenemünde
- Hans Kammler
- Staff Arrival
- Evacuation
- Redstone
- Chapter 40.Sputnik Satellite Becomes Defense Priority
- Part I: Pattern Recognition Training
- Part II: Cognitive Apprenticeship
- Part III: Mental Model Construction
- Part IV: Mental Models in Organizational Context
- Part V: Mastery Transmission
- Sample Chapter: Becoming the Revolutionizer
- Try This Right Now
- What Just Happened
- The Promise: What You Will Become
- Barriers as Opportunities
- How to Read This Book
- The Wizard’s Lens
- What Comes Next
- Chapter 1.The Human Cost of Staying First
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