Homebrew Cray-1

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 31, 2010 @05:00AM from the when-i-was-a-child dept.

egil writes "Chris Fenton built his own fully functional 1/10 scale Cray-1 supercomputer. True to the original, it includes the couch-seat, but is also binary compatible with the original. Instead of the power-hungry ECL technology, however, the scale model is built around a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. All software is available if you want to build one for your own living room. The largest obstacle in the project is to find original software."

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Apparently... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-31 05:07 · Score: 5, Funny

Not even a cray supercomputer can survive the slashdot effect.
1. Re:Apparently... by MarkRose · 2010-08-31 05:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Hey! The computer predates Slashdot by two decades, for craying out loud!
  
  --
  Be relentless!
2. Re:Apparently... by idontgno · 2010-08-31 05:35 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I Seymour what you did there.
  
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3. Re:Apparently... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-31 07:11 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I hope you realise that jokes of this quality will get you downmodded. And when that happens, don't come craying to me.
4. Re:Apparently... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-31 09:48 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Sounds like someone has a Chippewa on their shoulder.
Re:Xilinx... by blair1q · 2010-08-31 05:14 · Score: 4, Funny

And you've been playing WoW on it ever since.
Re:Wow! by MarkRose · 2010-08-31 05:17 · Score: 2, Funny

Why, cray tell, does it run so slowly?

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Be relentless!
But by SnarfQuest · 2010-08-31 05:20 · Score: 2, Funny

What version of Windows does it run? I might have a copy here...
Doesn't everything run Windows?

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Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
1. Re:But by kamochan · 2010-08-31 07:29 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  You misspelled ruin.
Re:The originals really are something else by Monkeedude1212 · 2010-08-31 05:29 · Score: 2, Funny

Anyhow, after that I sat on the couch. It was not comfy.
+1 Informative
Re:No software by WrongSizeGlass · 2010-08-31 05:35 · Score: 3, Funny

He has the needed software for the FPGA, but he has (so far) been unable to find some software to run on the machine. At least that is what I got from the TFA. It seems like no-one (including various 3 letter agencies) have copies of stuff so "old".

Maybe he'd have better luck finding old software if ageism wasn't rampant in the IT industry ;-)
Actually it runs Crysis by billlava · 2010-08-31 06:02 · Score: 2, Funny

Turns out the system requirements aren't as stringent as once thought.
Re:Xilinx... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-31 06:43 · Score: 1, Funny

Sadly, that's where the "PVP" came from :(

--TSP
Re:Chris - see the Supercomputer Centers, CMU, UCS by LWATCDR · 2010-08-31 07:09 · Score: 2, Funny

You mean that nobody has ported GCC to it yet? It must run NetBSD right?
Shocked I tell you just shocked.

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now that the slashdot effect has subsided.... by inerlogic · 2010-08-31 07:29 · Score: 2, Funny

the REAL news story here is that the guy is actually married!!

damn... my wife doesn't know what a Cray is, doesn't care what a Cray is and certainly wouldn't want to help me paint it....
in other news, i approve of the Bailey's and Stoli bottles on the table behind the mini-cray...
wow by Vorpix · 2010-08-31 07:36 · Score: 2, Funny

imagine a beowulf cluster of these! ;)

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frog blast the vent core
Re:The originals really are something else by History's+Coming+To · 2010-08-31 08:03 · Score: 2, Funny

I've got mod points, but you're on a +5 already and the time taken to type this feels more worthwhile somehow.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've always wondered how comfy those seats were, nearly as much as I've wondered why the hell they were there in the first place. Well now I know, and will die ever so slightly happier because of it. That's the most interesting thing I have ever read on Slashdot and I salute you for it. "It was not comfy". Thank you sir.

(And I'm being utterly sincere here.)

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