3 ms·
The last of the line, the SPARC-based CM-5 was the first time I saw one, but only on the big screen. http://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=15 http
by nickt 5y ago
The last of the line, the SPARC-based CM-5 was the first time I saw one, but only on the big screen.
http://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=15 http://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=15
- jfoutz 5y agoI always argued with people about the SGI UI for the Indy being real and not movie magic. I didn't realize that movie had a connection machine. That's amazing.
- dfox 5y agoThe book specifies that the park is ran by Cray supercomputer (IIRC there it even mentions particular model, probably Y-MP). For the movie it was replaced by CM-5, because it was deemed even more visually stunning, mainly because while Crays often have interesting industrial design (often because of the finite propagation speed of copper wire) they lack the blinkenlights.
- dragontamer 5y agoIIRC, the default blinkenlighs on the CM-5 was apparently a LED for each of the 4096 "cores" (really a SIMD-lane), and whether or not that particular "core" is active. On means that SIMD-lane is active, off means its inactive. Kind of a glorified Microsoft Windows "CPU Performance" screen, except physical. Given the regular pattern in Jurassic Park, I assume they reprogrammed the LEDs to look more futuristic.
- rbanffy 5y agoPeople who programmed those machines said that people often asked for programs that used those LED matrices as a display.
- totalforge 5y agoI read somewhere that the pattern displayed by the CM-5 in the film was referred to as 'common and pleasing #6', as close as I can recall it. I've not seen a definition of the pattern other than it's actual output.
- dfox 5y agoIIRC on CM-1/2 the LEDs reflected state of conditional execution of the individual VLSI packages (there is one LED per package, not one LED per CPU), on CM-5 it is just a bunch of LED matrices controlled more or less globally by I assume some BMC-like thing.