Slashdot Mirror
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!"
Now is your chance
Yeah, cause in 10 minutes it'll be slashdotted...
Give me a job. Please?
He should have hosted it on one of his Crays
Ever wanted to see inside a Cray T3D MPP, or maybe the gargantuan machine that is the T90? Now is your chance!
You mean now as in tomorrow when the slashdotting is over.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... one of those big super computers with all of the blinking lights and huge spool of tape spinning around. I've even known a few companies that were "disposing" of them. Unfortunatly, like most Mac owners, their policy tends to be "Throw it out. Don't let anyone else have it", so to this day, I am supercomputerless
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
(years of beer have killed a few neurons, so memory's a bit fuzzy... :-) )
Mirror dot has mirrored the link here.
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
Cray sold a computer to a company I worked for, for the sum of (raises finger to mouth) ONE POUND. Bwahahaha.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
... or, if you're ever near Mountain View, California, why not see them in person (and a whole lot more)?
Computer History Museum website
> t3d_2_big.jpg
> td3_psus_big.jpg
> t3d_wiring_big.jpg
> t90_2_big.jpg
> t90_system_board_big.jpg
Slashdot.
Porn for Nerds. JPGs that matter.
It's kind of creepy walking down the halls of this place. From one room you hear: "Stop, Dave. I'm afraid.". From another: "The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This is a guy's PRIVATE, PERSONAL Cray collection:
h tm
http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jamescurry/index.
It has to be the most comprehensive collection of Cray systems in the world (including Cray's facility in Chippawa falls?).
(Please do not post it on the front page of slashdot without digibarns permission). Those pictures are quite a bit outdated, as he no longer lives in that state and has added more systems since then.
I believe he had over 11 before. He donated a few to someone, I forget who.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Seymour Cray never designed the T3D supercomputer. Seymour split from Cray Research Inc (CRI) to found Cray Computer Corp (CCC) in 1989. At CCC he designed the GaAs Cray-3 and stillborn Cray-4. After CCC folded in 1995 he founded SRC Computers which was his first attempt at using commodity CPUs. SRC exists to this day but changed focus after Seymour's death in 1996. Other crayons may have better info but I believe that Steve Chen designed the T3D at CRI. Those of us who knew Seymour still miss him. He was quite simply the smartest man I have ever met.
Considering how tech savy the author seems to be, it's interesting that he doesn't understand what an MPP is. The T3d IS an mpp, made in response to a wave of mpp designs in the late 80's taking some of cray's market share (thinking machines, paragon, etc) MPP, incidently, stands for Massively Parallel Processing; massively as in hundreds, not 32.
The T90, on the other hand, is a pure SMP. The processors all sit on a shared bus (actually 256 parallel shared buses). Each CPU was really fast (for the time) and had really big pipes to memory, and really expensive.
Sorry, just picking nits.