4 ms·

Intel, AMD, ARM, etc could learn from supercomputers from 1970s/1980s era. They had to deal with heat problems and found solutions, look at e.g. Cray 2 Some ap

by frik 10y ago

Intel, AMD, ARM, etc could learn from supercomputers from 1970s/1980s era. They had to deal with heat problems and found solutions, look at e.g. Cray 2 Some applications would benefit a lot from higher single core performance, some applications would benefit from many cores on the same mainboard. For well know reasons (little competition) we are stuck with desktop 4 cores (and 2 on notebook even the i7) with little increased single core performance for years. Now that AMD comes with more competitive CPUs with a good price, Intel finally dusts of some years old designs from their basement and finally releases their first i7 notebook CPUs with more than 2 cores. So AMD and ARM CPU competition to Intel almost-monopoly is very good to bring fresh air to the stagnated desktop/notebook/server market.

dom0 10y ago
> Intel, AMD, ARM, etc could learn from supercomputers from 1970s/1980s era. They had to deal with heat problems and found solutions, look at e.g. Cray 2 You have to be more specific here to support such a claim.
- frik 10y ago
  > You have to I have to do nothing. You could fire up Wikipedia or Google or Amazon... Entire articles and books are written about Cray supercomputers and are waiting to be read by curious individuals. For Cray 2, that's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 it just gives an basic overview so don't jump to conclusions based on it. But it's worth to dive further in, really interesting topic.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    I am curious about heating and cooling, as I have built water cooling systems in PCs, but I am truly inexpert when it comes to industrial cooling. You are the one trying to make a point, and presumably know about some interesting problem and solution. If I do a search I will start with no knowledge of Cray and no context to find this answer, even the wikipedia page is too general. If I find common fan and water cooling solutions I might not see why they are better because that information might be too subtle for me as a novice. If you don't provide it is unlikely to be found this discussion; this conversion and you will be intellectually poorer for it. The onus truly is on you to provide interesting information in conversation when you talk.
- Animats 10y ago
  Seymour Cray used to say that the biggest problems in supercomputing were the thickness of the mat and getting rid of the heat. The "mat" refers to the wiring on the backplane, which in those days was wire-wrapped. The Computer Museum in Mountain View has a Cray I in the lobby, and you can see its wiring mat easily. Getting rid of the heat in the Cray I involved lots of copper with fluid channels, like the stuff overclockers use. The Cray 2 ran the whole CPU in a tank of inert fluorocarbon liquid. This was generally considered a pain. The idea comes back now and then. One Bitcoin mining farm in Japan ran submerged in coolant. Everybody else just used air cooling, sometimes in a cold climate.
dragontamer 10y ago
Cray 2 was a cabinet-sized minicomputer. They "solved" the heat problems with airconditioning and fans. The issues revolving around nano-meter scale heat bottlenecks is fundamentally different. You're smaller than airconditioners and fans.
- frik 10y ago
  > They "solved" the heat problems with airconditioning and fans. Wrong. Read at least the related Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Looks like an air conditioner to me. Its a liquid that absorbs heat, evaporates... while in gaseous form it is pumped to another location where it condenses and pumps heat out. Yeah, its nothing more than a fancy air conditioner. http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/images/air_conditioning_system.jpg http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/images/air_condit... In any case: I'm curious why you think this cabinet hold any use with regard to nanometer scale engineering tasks: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/1985-Cray-2-side-view.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/1985-Cra... There's a big difference between "cooling down a cabinet" and "cooling down a 10x10nm hotspot" ----------- IBM's "liquid cooled chips" might be a potential solution: where water is pumped through channels on the die itself. (!!!). The water absorbs the heat directly from the die. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-ibm-is-making-computers-more-like-your-brain-for-real/ https://www.cnet.com/news/how-ibm-is-making-computers-more-l... But the technological hurdles to accomplish this sort of task are massive! IBM's done it, but no one else has figured out how to do it. So its not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination.

by frik 10y ago

dom0 10y ago

> Intel, AMD, ARM, etc could learn from supercomputers from 1970s/1980s era. They had to deal with heat problems and found solutions, look at e.g. Cray 2 You have to be more specific here to support such a claim.

frik 10y ago
> You have to I have to do nothing. You could fire up Wikipedia or Google or Amazon... Entire articles and books are written about Cray supercomputers and are waiting to be read by curious individuals. For Cray 2, that's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 it just gives an basic overview so don't jump to conclusions based on it. But it's worth to dive further in, really interesting topic.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I am curious about heating and cooling, as I have built water cooling systems in PCs, but I am truly inexpert when it comes to industrial cooling. You are the one trying to make a point, and presumably know about some interesting problem and solution. If I do a search I will start with no knowledge of Cray and no context to find this answer, even the wikipedia page is too general. If I find common fan and water cooling solutions I might not see why they are better because that information might be too subtle for me as a novice. If you don't provide it is unlikely to be found this discussion; this conversion and you will be intellectually poorer for it. The onus truly is on you to provide interesting information in conversation when you talk.
Animats 10y ago
Seymour Cray used to say that the biggest problems in supercomputing were the thickness of the mat and getting rid of the heat. The "mat" refers to the wiring on the backplane, which in those days was wire-wrapped. The Computer Museum in Mountain View has a Cray I in the lobby, and you can see its wiring mat easily. Getting rid of the heat in the Cray I involved lots of copper with fluid channels, like the stuff overclockers use. The Cray 2 ran the whole CPU in a tank of inert fluorocarbon liquid. This was generally considered a pain. The idea comes back now and then. One Bitcoin mining farm in Japan ran submerged in coolant. Everybody else just used air cooling, sometimes in a cold climate.

dragontamer 10y ago

Cray 2 was a cabinet-sized minicomputer. They "solved" the heat problems with airconditioning and fans. The issues revolving around nano-meter scale heat bottlenecks is fundamentally different. You're smaller than airconditioners and fans.

frik 10y ago
> They "solved" the heat problems with airconditioning and fans. Wrong. Read at least the related Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Looks like an air conditioner to me. Its a liquid that absorbs heat, evaporates... while in gaseous form it is pumped to another location where it condenses and pumps heat out. Yeah, its nothing more than a fancy air conditioner. http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/images/air_conditioning_system.jpg http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/images/air_condit... In any case: I'm curious why you think this cabinet hold any use with regard to nanometer scale engineering tasks: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/1985-Cray-2-side-view.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/1985-Cra... There's a big difference between "cooling down a cabinet" and "cooling down a 10x10nm hotspot" ----------- IBM's "liquid cooled chips" might be a potential solution: where water is pumped through channels on the die itself. (!!!). The water absorbs the heat directly from the die. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-ibm-is-making-computers-more-like-your-brain-for-real/ https://www.cnet.com/news/how-ibm-is-making-computers-more-l... But the technological hurdles to accomplish this sort of task are massive! IBM's done it, but no one else has figured out how to do it. So its not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination.