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> 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 h
by 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 agoI 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 agoSeymour 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.