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A Private Home For Retired Supercomputers
Steve writes "Every geek has wanted to play with a Cray supercomputer. Hexus.net had the rare opportunity to meet up with a man who has something of a fetish for collecting them! They got a look at some of the amazing kit Armari - a systems integration company - have in their possession. Ever wanted to see inside a Cray T3D MPP, or maybe the gargantuan machine that is the T90? Now is your chance!"
Steam Locos
Steam Traction Engines
Brunnels Suspension Bridge
Model T Ford
Stutz Bearcat
AC Cobra 427
GT 40
Jaguar D Type
All of these could be seen as scrap metal but to some people they become important. It's the same with old computers, what I would give to run a some jobs on a B4955, nostalgia has great value.
Given the current malaise of the computing industry looking forward and back to better times is a way of get over the crap we currently have to deal with.
And therein lies the problem. Most super-computers were purpose-built and are thus not too useful for general purpose programs. Some optimizations that have been done to these machines means that a 486 might even be faster on certain code!
It's a lot like comparing a luxury yacht to an aircraft carrier. Sure, the carrier is pretty damn cool, has lots of capacity, and lots of features. Unfortunately, the carrier is probably not going to move an inch without a full crew and military grade servicing. All of those great things you thought you would get from buying an old carrier, you find would have been better served with a new yacht.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Slashdotted Already??
Not trying to be an ass here, but why do people always say this. Isn't the site most likley to be slashdotted when the story is new. Or should the server some how manage very heavy load and then get tired? I don't get the logic behind the "Slashdotted Already".
It's not about the machine, as much as the man and the philosophy behind the machine.
Seymour Cray was one of the first true legends of computing. His mixture of sheer architectural intelligence and interesting personality quirks made him one of computing's first media stars (for small niche values of media). His architectural philosophy was to do one thing and do it well. For example, the main issue leading to his break with CDC was that they wanted the new generation of Cybers to be multi-purpose, while Seymour wanted to crunch scientific bits really, really fast.
If you look at the processors he designed, there were almost never any architectural compromises to his goal of making the machine having the most FLOPs. If that meant memory had no parity (His quote: "Parity is for farmers.") so be it. If it meant new cooling technologies, he'd design it. If it meant a design of a new chip, he'd do it. That sort of single-minded devotion to architectural purity is pretty much unknown today, because companies aren't interested in pushing the technological envelope the way Seymour did. And that's why Cray's are legendary - something that an SGI or Intel multi-processor never will be.
That is all.