4 ms·

Is there any software apart from benchmarks that will make it feel that fast. All softwares that I use feel more advanced version of things that I ran on my 386

Is there any software apart from benchmarks that will make it feel that fast. All softwares that I use feel more advanced version of things that I ran on my 386. GUI, IDE, compiler, office... I understand that the exercise may still be theoretical as any sw used by Met now will be designed for million time fast computers. But there should exist some software that would have required Cray to run then.

xcv123 3y ago
No. The Cray-1 ran batch processing jobs, mostly scientific simulations which took hours or days to compute. It had a terminal interface and wasn't used for real time interactive applications.
- timthorn 3y ago
  IIRC, in real world installations the Cray would have been paired with a minicomputer or mainframe.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    So should we pair with a PiPDP-11?:)
  - flyinghamster 3y ago
    The Wiki article on the Cray-1 indicates that it had a Data General Eclipse as its front-end processor.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  It was a later machine than the Cray-1, but I remember seeing a post on the jsoftware forums from someone that ran interactive APL on a Cray. Having a REPL to access a machine like that in that era must have been quite something.
  - pinewurst 3y ago
    Crays were not good interactive machines for a few reasons, but lacking virtual memory was the most notable.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
      From what I remember the machine they were using had a Unix workstation that acted as the front end, so the Cray would be just as an accelerator. APL uses a stack based approach to memory management that maps well to bare hardware with minimal OS features.
    - tzs 3y ago
      What do you mean by "virtual memory"? The Cray-1 had memory management hardware similar to that on DEC PDP-10s that had KA-10 processors and numerous 68K Unix workstations in the '80s, all of which served as interactive time sharing systems just fine. The memory management hardware in those systems would take the addresses generated by the instructions, compare them to a limit register, and if below the limit would then add them to a base register to get the final memory address. Some systems would have more than one pair of base/limit registers, such as a pair for code and pair for data. Some people do call such systems virtual memory, because the addresses specified in the code are not the addresses that the memory sees (unless the base register contains 0). But I think it was more common for systems where all the MMU did was simply relocate segments and all of the program's code and data had to be in memory for the program to run to not be considered to be virtual memory. Virtual memory usually meant systems that allowed you to run programs that used address spaces larger than the available memory.
      - cardiffspaceman 3y ago
        Back in the day, the KA10 under Tops10 could “go virtual” which meant that some of the processes would overflow to spinning metal, either disk or IIRC drum. Otherwise the various processes would all be in RAM.
        3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
yummypaint 3y ago
The best bet might be an old physics code written in fortran. Maybe calculation of scattering cross sections from matrix elements or something with alot of vectorizable linear algebra.
KeplerBoy 3y ago
A lot of the stuff that took hours back then can now be done in sub-seconds. Think about mechanical engineering: Back then they might have simulated how cars deform in a crash. Now we can perform similar simulations in real-time for fun in our video games. Afaik it's hardly ever done because no one actually needs physically accurate models in games, but it could be done. Same goes for rendering back then they rendered each frame of toy story for a good few hours, now we achieve arguably better graphics in real time.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > Think about mechanical engineering: Back then they might have simulated how cars deform in a crash. Now we can perform similar simulations in real-time for fun in our video games. Afaik it's hardly ever done because no one actually needs physically accurate models in games, but it could be done. BeamNG is basically that.
  - AureliusMA 3y ago
    You beat me to it! Such a fun game
- qup 3y ago
  I think there's something to be said for the wait period. The time to anticipate the result makes it feel very worthwhile, especially when only a handful of machines on the planet can do the calculation. It all feels very mundane when I can do it on my slow commodity laptop in under a second.

xcv123 3y ago

No. The Cray-1 ran batch processing jobs, mostly scientific simulations which took hours or days to compute. It had a terminal interface and wasn't used for real time interactive applications.

timthorn 3y ago
IIRC, in real world installations the Cray would have been paired with a minicomputer or mainframe.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  So should we pair with a PiPDP-11?:)
- flyinghamster 3y ago
  The Wiki article on the Cray-1 indicates that it had a Data General Eclipse as its front-end processor.
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
It was a later machine than the Cray-1, but I remember seeing a post on the jsoftware forums from someone that ran interactive APL on a Cray. Having a REPL to access a machine like that in that era must have been quite something.
- pinewurst 3y ago
  Crays were not good interactive machines for a few reasons, but lacking virtual memory was the most notable.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
    From what I remember the machine they were using had a Unix workstation that acted as the front end, so the Cray would be just as an accelerator. APL uses a stack based approach to memory management that maps well to bare hardware with minimal OS features.
  - tzs 3y ago
    What do you mean by "virtual memory"? The Cray-1 had memory management hardware similar to that on DEC PDP-10s that had KA-10 processors and numerous 68K Unix workstations in the '80s, all of which served as interactive time sharing systems just fine. The memory management hardware in those systems would take the addresses generated by the instructions, compare them to a limit register, and if below the limit would then add them to a base register to get the final memory address. Some systems would have more than one pair of base/limit registers, such as a pair for code and pair for data. Some people do call such systems virtual memory, because the addresses specified in the code are not the addresses that the memory sees (unless the base register contains 0). But I think it was more common for systems where all the MMU did was simply relocate segments and all of the program's code and data had to be in memory for the program to run to not be considered to be virtual memory. Virtual memory usually meant systems that allowed you to run programs that used address spaces larger than the available memory.
    - cardiffspaceman 3y ago
      Back in the day, the KA10 under Tops10 could “go virtual” which meant that some of the processes would overflow to spinning metal, either disk or IIRC drum. Otherwise the various processes would all be in RAM.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

yummypaint 3y ago

The best bet might be an old physics code written in fortran. Maybe calculation of scattering cross sections from matrix elements or something with alot of vectorizable linear algebra.

KeplerBoy 3y ago

A lot of the stuff that took hours back then can now be done in sub-seconds. Think about mechanical engineering: Back then they might have simulated how cars deform in a crash. Now we can perform similar simulations in real-time for fun in our video games. Afaik it's hardly ever done because no one actually needs physically accurate models in games, but it could be done. Same goes for rendering back then they rendered each frame of toy story for a good few hours, now we achieve arguably better graphics in real time.

Eisenstein 3y ago
> Think about mechanical engineering: Back then they might have simulated how cars deform in a crash. Now we can perform similar simulations in real-time for fun in our video games. Afaik it's hardly ever done because no one actually needs physically accurate models in games, but it could be done. BeamNG is basically that.
- AureliusMA 3y ago
  You beat me to it! Such a fun game
qup 3y ago
I think there's something to be said for the wait period. The time to anticipate the result makes it feel very worthwhile, especially when only a handful of machines on the planet can do the calculation. It all feels very mundane when I can do it on my slow commodity laptop in under a second.