1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputer s. More specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to be described as crayons.
2. A computron that participates only in number crunching .
3. A unit of computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1 . There is a standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener.
[ Jargon File ]
(1994-10-13)