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We used to compare the speed of new & fast computers to the VAX 11/780, then to the Cray-1. Now we can buy a computer that exceeds the speed and memory of a Cra
by johnklos 5y ago
We used to compare the speed of new & fast computers to the VAX 11/780, then to the Cray-1. Now we can buy a computer that exceeds the speed and memory of a Cray-1 for $10 and lose it in between couch cushions.
What we're missing, though, is excitement about this. Tell a group of high schoolers in the mid '80 that they'd have a chance to run whatever they wanted on a Cray-1 for an hour, and they'd come up with all sorts of ideas. Today? They have all this power and much, much more, but most people don't care very much.
It's a real shame that Cray supercomputers were used to model weather, to calculate ideal parameters for fusion experiments, to design other computer systems, to start the computer visual effects world, yet we have so little software from these machines.
I'm very happy to see this preservation effort.
- throwawayboise 5y agoI was in High School when the Cray X-MP was the world's fastest computer. There were a few nerds in my physics class that talked about it, but the vast majority of the high school would have had no idea what it was nor would they have found it interesting.
- protomyth 5y agoDOE used to run a high school student summer program for a week at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The students would get to program on one of the Crays that the lab had. They even got to print out documentation (paper and microfiche).