People and the Machine Environment

Supercomputing activities at GM have been focused primarily on projects in GMR and/or cooperative activities between GMR and one or more GM Divisions or Staffs.

There are approximately 900 GMR employees, with about 50 per cent of these being R&D professionals. In this latter group, 79 per cent have a Ph.D., 18 per cent an M.S., and 3 per cent a B.S. as their highest degree. In addition, there are Electronic Data Systems (EDS) personnel serving in support roles throughout GM.

General Motors was the first automotive company to obtain its own in-house Cray Research supercomputer, which was a CRAY 1S/2300 delivered to GMR in late 1983. Today, GM has a CRAY Y-MP4/364 at GMR, a CRAY Y-MP4/232 at an EDS center in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and a CRAY X-MP/18 at Adam Opel in Germany. Throughout GM, there is a proliferation of smaller machines, including a CONVEX Computer Corporation C-210 minisuper at B-O-C Flint, Michigan, IBM mainframes, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) minis, a Stardent 2000 graphics super at C-P-C Engineering, numerous Silicon Graphics high-end workstations, and a large collection of workstations from IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Apollo (Hewlett-Packard), and DEC. There is extensive networking among most of the machines to promote access across GM sites.