Re: NSA spy machine

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Ian F. writes:

> You're talking about silicon fab lines here, Tim.  As far as I am aware, Cray
> has never fab it's own chips.  Indeed, most of their boards which I have
> seen (I, II, Y-MP/8 and Y-MP/EL) have used chips sourced from fairly well-
> known vendors, such as VLSI Technologies.

In my last post, I forgot to mention that Cray Computer Company
actually *did* and *does* fabricate its own chips! They committed to
GaAs from a supplier and then bought the supplier when it faltered.

My recollection is that it was Gigabit Logic, but it _might_ have been
the "other" GaAs supplier, whose name escapes me this minute.

I'm not claiming this as the proximate cause of Crayco's current
problems. But I do think committing to GaAs *was* a factor, and this
relates to the levels of integration in CMOS and BiCMOS versus the
levels currently obtainable in GaAs.

A huge fraction of Crayco's spending went into the advanced robotic
wirebonding and packaging of thousands of GaAs chips. IBM spent vast
fortunes on its advanced packaging/cooling systems, while Intel and
other chip companies concentrated on CMOS VLSI, with much lower
overall packaging and cooling costs for the same performance.

--Tim May



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