4 ms·

For the Cray 1 seats and design were an aesthetic / engineering solution. It had to dissipate and have so much power that the seats are basically the power supp

For the Cray 1 seats and design were an aesthetic / engineering solution. It had to dissipate and have so much power that the seats are basically the power supply. I also like that aesthetic it feels like you could discuss your problems there. Now power and rack units are somewhat standardized. Cooling can somewhat differ in that it could use liquid cooling but most use air .

datameta 2y ago
And the reason for a circular design is so that the wire lengths could all be under 4 feet in order to achieve actual projected clock rates. I saw the thing in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Highly highly recommend the museum to every HN user. I went through it twice, first with the greybeard volunteer guide, and then looped in by myself straightaway.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  To offer a second opinion, the Cray-1 was the only thing I found cool about the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It was otherwise just a like a big website, the history was all dead. In contrast the National Museum of Computing next to Bletchley Had lots of computers turned on, with enthusiast volunteers demonstrating and explaining things. You could punch paper tape and feed it to the Dekatron and see the memory changing as the program ran, or poke at magnetic core memory sheets and someone was right there to discuss all the old tech.
  - creer 2y ago
    I do miss the old "visible storage" Computer History Museum - where you could walk around and peek into so many great machines. The current version has been musee-ified to death. It might safer from flocks of school kids but a real shame for the rest of us.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      They have very strict policies around powering up their devices. I tried to persuade them to look into the original IBM 2260 terminal font design (it is implemented as core memory with missing cores for bits and it resided in the terminal controller). Of course they said no.
  - datameta 2y ago
    My mind was absolutely blown by mercury delay line memory of the UNIVAC 1. The things we did before silicon dynamic memory were works of crazy engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      I felt the same. It never even occurred to me that you could you use a physical compression wave in a fluid as memory in a real computer. Here's a delightful snippet from that article btw: > Alan Turing proposed the use of gin as an ultrasonic delay medium, claiming that it had the necessary acoustic properties.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        We should build a computer that uses lasers and the Apollo retro-reflectors as delay-line memory. It’ll be the largest computer in the solar system. Who’s in?
        Y_Y 2y ago
        The European Space Agency is who. https://www.lisamission.org/ https://www.lisamission.org/
        rbanffy 2y ago
        I doubt they’d allow us to use the beams as data carriers…
    - akira2501 2y ago
      My favorite are the "glass delay line memory." https://archive.org/details/TNM_Glass_computer_memories_-_Corning_Electronics_20171206_0185/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TNM_Glass_computer_memories_-_Co...
      - ForOldHack 2y ago
  - ForOldHack 2y ago
    The CHM is cool, but my cousins went to Bletchley, and were very impressed.
  - Rebelgecko 2y ago
    You might also like the National Cryptologic Museum next to NSA's HQ. The Cray they have isn't as interactive, although you can sit on it for the Sneakers vibes. They have multiple Enigma machines you can play with which I thought was pretty fun
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  Very highly recommended. The Cray was very cool. Had to explain why there was a wire 11.8" long framed. ( Thank you Rt Gen Grace Hopper! ) I walked through twice without a greybeard, and then when I went with a guide... I started smirking when ever he made a mistake... He finally started asking 'Do you have anything to add?' and I only make a few small corrections, until we saw the wire. 11.8". I would think that the Cray would be designed to keep the wires under 3' 11.21" ( 4 nano seconds ) There are PICTURES! https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdetect/3599257794/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdetect/3599257794/in/ph...
neilv 2y ago
> Cray 1 seats [...] feels like you could discuss your problems there. A modern LLM supercomputer could take that contemplative bench a step further, to a therapist's couch. Though, constrained by the modern standard datacenter rack form factor of supercomputers, maybe you'd have to suspend the patient vertically in a cabinet. So long as they're less than 19 inches wide/thick.
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  I was thinking space heater, but the feeling is the same.
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  Seats 11 comfortably, bit warm during floating point operations. All the crays dissipated an enormous amount of heat. Today's machines, millions of times more powerful, disspipate thousands of times more heat. What makes a super computer?

datameta 2y ago

And the reason for a circular design is so that the wire lengths could all be under 4 feet in order to achieve actual projected clock rates. I saw the thing in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Highly highly recommend the museum to every HN user. I went through it twice, first with the greybeard volunteer guide, and then looped in by myself straightaway.

Y_Y 2y ago
To offer a second opinion, the Cray-1 was the only thing I found cool about the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It was otherwise just a like a big website, the history was all dead. In contrast the National Museum of Computing next to Bletchley Had lots of computers turned on, with enthusiast volunteers demonstrating and explaining things. You could punch paper tape and feed it to the Dekatron and see the memory changing as the program ran, or poke at magnetic core memory sheets and someone was right there to discuss all the old tech.
- creer 2y ago
  I do miss the old "visible storage" Computer History Museum - where you could walk around and peek into so many great machines. The current version has been musee-ified to death. It might safer from flocks of school kids but a real shame for the rest of us.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    They have very strict policies around powering up their devices. I tried to persuade them to look into the original IBM 2260 terminal font design (it is implemented as core memory with missing cores for bits and it resided in the terminal controller). Of course they said no.
- datameta 2y ago
  My mind was absolutely blown by mercury delay line memory of the UNIVAC 1. The things we did before silicon dynamic memory were works of crazy engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    I felt the same. It never even occurred to me that you could you use a physical compression wave in a fluid as memory in a real computer. Here's a delightful snippet from that article btw: > Alan Turing proposed the use of gin as an ultrasonic delay medium, claiming that it had the necessary acoustic properties.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      We should build a computer that uses lasers and the Apollo retro-reflectors as delay-line memory. It’ll be the largest computer in the solar system. Who’s in?
      - Y_Y 2y ago
        The European Space Agency is who. https://www.lisamission.org/ https://www.lisamission.org/
        rbanffy 2y ago
        I doubt they’d allow us to use the beams as data carriers…
  - akira2501 2y ago
    My favorite are the "glass delay line memory." https://archive.org/details/TNM_Glass_computer_memories_-_Corning_Electronics_20171206_0185/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TNM_Glass_computer_memories_-_Co...
    - ForOldHack 2y ago
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  The CHM is cool, but my cousins went to Bletchley, and were very impressed.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  You might also like the National Cryptologic Museum next to NSA's HQ. The Cray they have isn't as interactive, although you can sit on it for the Sneakers vibes. They have multiple Enigma machines you can play with which I thought was pretty fun
ForOldHack 2y ago
Very highly recommended. The Cray was very cool. Had to explain why there was a wire 11.8" long framed. ( Thank you Rt Gen Grace Hopper! ) I walked through twice without a greybeard, and then when I went with a guide... I started smirking when ever he made a mistake... He finally started asking 'Do you have anything to add?' and I only make a few small corrections, until we saw the wire. 11.8". I would think that the Cray would be designed to keep the wires under 3' 11.21" ( 4 nano seconds ) There are PICTURES! https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdetect/3599257794/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdetect/3599257794/in/ph...

neilv 2y ago

> Cray 1 seats [...] feels like you could discuss your problems there. A modern LLM supercomputer could take that contemplative bench a step further, to a therapist's couch. Though, constrained by the modern standard datacenter rack form factor of supercomputers, maybe you'd have to suspend the patient vertically in a cabinet. So long as they're less than 19 inches wide/thick.

ForOldHack 2y ago
I was thinking space heater, but the feeling is the same.
ForOldHack 2y ago
Seats 11 comfortably, bit warm during floating point operations. All the crays dissipated an enormous amount of heat. Today's machines, millions of times more powerful, disspipate thousands of times more heat. What makes a super computer?