Cray-1 - Software

Software

In 1978, the first standard software package for the Cray-1 was released, consisting of three main products:

• Cray Operating System (COS) (later machines would run UNICOS, Cray's UNIX flavor)
• Cray Assembly Language (CAL)
• Cray FORTRAN (CFT), the first automatically vectorizing FORTRAN compiler

The United States Department of Energy funded sites from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation supercomputer centers (for high-energy physics) represented the second largest block with LLL's Cray Time Sharing System (CTSS). CTSS was written in a dynamic memory Fortran first named LRLTRAN which ran on CDC 7600s and renamed CVC (pronounced "Civic") when vectorization for the Cray-1 was added. Cray Research attempted to support these sites accordingly. These software choices had influences on later minisupercomputers, also known as "crayettes".

NCAR has its own operating system (NCAROS).

The National Security Agency developed their own set of operating systems (AMOK and possibly TROTH) and languages, however, not much is known about them.

Libraries started with Cray Research's own offerings and Netlib.

Other operating systems existed, but most languages tended to be Fortran or Fortran-based. Bell Laboratories, as both proof of portability concept and circuit design, moved the first C compiler to their Cray-1 (non-vectorizing). This act would later give CRI a six-month head start on the Cray-2 Unix port to ETA Systems detriment, and Lucasfilm's first computer generated test film, The Adventures of André and Wally B..

Application software generally tends to be either classified (e.g, nuclear code, cryptanalytic code) or proprietary (e.g., petroleum reservoir modeling). This was because little software was shared between customers and university customers were few. The few exceptions were climatological and meteorological programs until the NSF responded to the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems project and created their supercomputer centers. Even then, little code was shared.