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The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated
1sockchuck writes "The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here's a visual guide to the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released this week at the SC11 conference."
The entire building is a plastic white egg, there's a power button, a really big plug, 1 Ethernet jack, 1 usb port and several proprietary ports that no one but Apple uses. The preferred interface is a small touchscreen kiosk carefully hidden with tasteful landscaping.
There are no user-serviceable parts inside, opening the shell voids the warranty. What few upgrade options available when ordering will have exorbitant mark up and it will be slightly slower and a lot more expensive than most of its competitors. If anything breaks the recommended solution is to demolish it on site and order a new one.
Well supercomputers tend to do look nice. If you are going to pay millions of dollars on a computer it better look pretty darn cool to impress the board of directors who approved it.
I use to work with a sales man who worked for Cray. Those old supercomputers with all those blinking lights knobs and buttons were there just to make the computer look impressive. They were not overly functional. Companies who buy these expensive computers would flaunt them and have them quite visible in their organization. Not just stuck in a back room.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Looking at some photograph ,I see your point - something plain or just black with some blinkenlighten like the Connection Machine would have been enough.
Though, when you buy a system like that, the cost isn't the hardware, it's the field and support engineers available 24/7, customer support, projects and power consumption that are the big costs. There used to be a joke, "Buy a super-computer from us, and we'll throw the building in for free".
Modern day supercomputer systems use a standardized rack frame system and intercommunication fabric so that the oldest and slowest nodes can be pulled out, while the newest and fastest ones can be slotted in straight away. That removes the overhead of having to construct a new building, power supply system, air conditioning and network infrastructure just to do a simple upgrade.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads