I had the cover of this pinned up on my wall! Supercomputer porn.
The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
21–30 of 111 posts
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#22The CRAY-1 was so ridiculously ahead of its time that it took until the Pentium MMX (1997) for “ordinary” computers to catch up to its raw performance. That’s 20 years or about 10,000X the available VLSI transistors via Moore’s Law.
Seymour Cray never designed a silicon microprocessor. I wonder what he would have created had that opportunity presented itself.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#23I knew a guy who worked at one of the national labs that had its own Cray supercomputer, in a computer room with a big observation window that visitors could admire it through, of course (all Crays required observations windows to show them off).
Just before a tour group came by, he hid inside the Cray, and waited for them to arrive. Then he casually strolled out from the back of the Cray, pulling up the zipper of his jeans, with a sheepish relieved expression on his face, looked up and saw the tour group, acted startled, then scurried away.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#24Documentation is fantastic.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#25to deploy a 2nd hand Cray-1 at UQ, we had to raise the ex-IBM 3033 floor, it turned out the bend radius for flourinert was NOT the same as a water cooled machine. We also installed a voltage re-generator which is basically a huge spinning mass, you convert Australian volts to DC, spin the machine, and take off re-generated high frequency volts for the cray, as well as 110v on the right hz for boring stuff alongside.…
Cray-1 or Cray-2? IIRC Fluorinert was new with the Cray-2, while wikipedia suggests that the Cray-1 used a freon as coolant.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#26Why the thin black curtain on the window? Thoughts: 1. To block some sunlight from getting in. 2. It’s a secure facility and wanted to prevent people from looking in. 3. To not have to look at something outside. 4. It’s a secure facility and wanted to prevent the chance of taking a picture of someone or something outside that could compromise the location of the computer or someone’s identity; sometimes the first pla…
Or, you know: Sometimes, a window shade is just a window shade.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#27to deploy a 2nd hand Cray-1 at UQ, we had to raise the ex-IBM 3033 floor, it turned out the bend radius for flourinert was NOT the same as a water cooled machine. We also installed a voltage re-generator which is basically a huge spinning mass, you convert Australian volts to DC, spin the machine, and take off re-generated high frequency volts for the cray, as well as 110v on the right hz for boring stuff alongside.…
Cray-1 or Cray-2? IIRC Fluorinert was new with the Cray-2, while wikipedia suggests that the Cray-1 used a freon as coolant.
There you go. Not to doubt what you say, but we definitely had the love seat yet we also had a tank of vaguely flourescing green liquid. Maybe we had some intermediate state, the cray-1 cpu form but the cray-2 upgraded coolant.
It wouldn't surprise me if we had the bastard love-child of leftovers from Boeing.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#28I remember doing a report on this in high school in the late 80s. I'd love to do an order of magnitude comparison to a modern M4 Mac... Amazing how far we've come.
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many times faster my iPhone 17 Pro Max is? Sometimes I like to remind myself we are living in the future. A future that seemed like SciFi when I was a kid in the 70s! Sadly I don’t think we will ever see Warp Drives, Time Travel or World Peace. But we might get Jet Packs!
At the risk of sounding cliche i'll point out that ios probably uses several times the capacity of a cray 1 just to get the keyboard to work.
Yes, but the impressive part is that the iPhone does it on a few mW instead of a few MW
Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]
#30Why the thin black curtain on the window? Thoughts: 1. To block some sunlight from getting in. 2. It’s a secure facility and wanted to prevent people from looking in. 3. To not have to look at something outside. 4. It’s a secure facility and wanted to prevent the chance of taking a picture of someone or something outside that could compromise the location of the computer or someone’s identity; sometimes the first pla…
It was the 70s, and that was simply the style at the time.