Editing Cray-2 (section)

== Uses and successors ==
The Cray-2 was predominantly developed for the [[United States]] Departments of [[United States Department of Defense|Defense]] and [[United States Department of Energy|Energy]]. Uses tended to be for [[nuclear weapon]]s research or [[oceanography|oceanographic]] ([[sonar]]) development. However, the first Cray-2 (serial number 1) was used at the [[NERSC|National Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center]] at [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]] for unclassified energy research. It also found its way into civil agencies (such as [[NASA Ames Research Center]]), universities, and corporations worldwide.  For example, [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] and [[General Motors]] both used the Cray-2 for processing complex [[Finite Element Analysis]] models of car bodyshells, and for performing virtual crash testing of bodyshell components prior to production.

The Cray-2 would have been superseded by the [[Cray-3]], but due to development problems only a single Cray-3 was built and it was never paid for. The spiritual descendant of the Cray-2 is the [[Cray X1]], offered by [[Cray]].

=== Comparison to later computers ===
In 2012, Piotr Luszczek (a former doctoral student of [[Jack Dongarra]]), presented results showing that an [[iPad 2]] matched the historical performance of the Cray-2 on an embedded [[LINPACK]] benchmark.<ref name="iPad2_Cray2">{{Cite web
 |url=https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE4NjU
 |title=Apple iPad 2 As Fast As The Cray-2 Super Computer
 |first=Michael
 |last=Larabel
 |date=16 September 2012
 |accessdate=February 19, 2015
 |archive-date=20 February 2015
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150220054659/http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE4NjU
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>