a brief history of the CACR logo

1995

In 1995, the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) subsumed the activities and staff of the precursory organization, the Caltech Concurrent Supercomputing Facilities. As our Center prepared for the official announcement by Caltech of the formation of the CACR, our new research organization needed an identity. We needed a logo.

CACR staff scientist Roy Williams, known for his creativity as well as his computational research, created this version of the CACR logo.

original CACR logo by Roy Williams, 1995

The design has underlying themes. It is based on a particular graph connectivity: the hypercube spanning tree for 32 nodes. It is a graph defined as follows: The numbers from 0 to 31 are represented in binary, and each number represents a node of the graph. There is an edge from one number to another if one can be transformed to the other by switching off the most significant of the on bits. The nodes may be classified according to the number of bits in their binary: there is one node (0) with no bits, 5 nodes with one bit, 10 nodes with 2 bits, 10 nodes with three bits, 5 nodes with four bits and one node with five bits.

The reasoning for using this graph as the basis of a design:

It is a good algorithm for doing a broadcast or global operation on a network, including mesh and hypercube MIMD machines and more general networks.

It has a center, that is the zero-node to/from which the fan-in/broadcast goes, thus expressing the importance of communication in addition to computation.

It is based on the hypercube, providing a historical echo.

1998

In mid 1998 Santiago Lombeyda recreated Roy's original logo, in vector format.

vectorized version of CACR logo, 1998

1998

In late 1998, Sarah Emery developed a new design for the CACR web pages. The design incorporated the CACR colors--rust and blue, so the new blue and white CACR banner was adopted:

CACR web logo by Sarah Emery, 1998

2000

In 2000 a vector graphics version was created, and the logo was adopted as the official logo for all media.

vectorized version of CACR web, 2000

2005

In 2005, a new logo incarnation by Santiago Lombeyda was created, as a hybrid from the original CACR logo and the 1998 web version.

CACR stamp logo by Santiago Lombeyda, 2005

It more generally stood for: components being brought together to work in unison as well as the natural forking of parallel processing to complete one task.

It was presented a "label for cutting edge research", serveing as a stamp of professional leading thought, creativity, and ingenuity in computational science. It was meant to embody as a sub-brand of everything that Caltech represents, as applied to the ever developing and changing young world of advanced scientific computing.