Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

s3data.computerhistory.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 111 posts

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#31

Post by FarmerPotato »

qsera wrote: post #20
firecall wrote: post #8

Earlier 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!

>how many times faster my iPhone 17 Pro Max is.. Sadly most of that power is not working for you, most of the time, but working against you, by spying, tracking and manipulating you. Bet that was not include in your sci-fi dreams in 70s..

Oh but we had The Forbin Project, its sequel Colossus, and later Wargames. Not to mention Star Trek episodes with malignant computers. And I have No Mouth But I Must Scream.

In the 70s, science fiction fed me Cold War fears of world-controlling mainframes.

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#33

Post by markus_zhang »

ggm wrote: post #3

to 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.…

Hello Bandit!

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#34

Post by FarmerPotato »

ggm wrote: post #3

to 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.…

I used a Cray C-90 and T3D 256-core machine from 1995-1999. The T3D used commodity Alpha 21164, and was already behind the T3E when we got it (Cray refurbished.) By the end it was outclassed by an SGI Oxygen box with 8 CPUs. I’d already ported a lot of software from SunOS and HP-UX to Irix and Unicos (Cray) and it was easy to move it to Linux in the end.

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#36

Post by __patchbit__ »

chasil wrote: post #22
twoodfin wrote: post #4

The 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray

In his memory some have said his name are the last two characters in RISC and CISC.

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#37

Post by idatum »

bytesandbits wrote: post #35

who was the industrial designer? Cray-1 fits so well it looks straight out of 2001: A space Odyssey

In the past few years whenever I re-watch 2001 when Dave is shutting down HAL, I see a spaceship capable data center. And HAL sings "Daisy.." finally at the foundational, bare metal layer.

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#38

Post by themafia »

bytesandbits wrote: post #35

who was the industrial designer? Cray-1 fits so well it looks straight out of 2001: A space Odyssey

Cray himself. Here's a talk about designing it. My favorite part is his description of the aluminum machining they had to invent in order to move the freon through the frame to keep the machine from melting. It's a great talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtOA1vuoDgQ

Re: The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

#39

Post by hulitu »

hypersoar wrote: post #16
firecall wrote: post #8

Earlier 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!

From the Wikipedia article on the Cray 1: "The 160 MFLOPS Cray-1 was succeeded in 1982 by the 800 MFLOPS Cray X-MP, the first Cray multi-processing computer. In 1985, the very advanced Cray-2, capable of 1.9 GFLOPS peak performance ... By comparison, the processor in a typical 2013 smart device, such as a Google Nexus 10 or HTC One, performs at roughly 1 GFLOPS,[6] while the A13 processor in a 2019 iPhone 11 performs…

> while the A13 processor in a 2019 iPhone 11 performs at 154.9 GFLOPS,[

Sustained ? Or just for some ms when the thermals kick in ?

Post reply on HN