Seymour Cray ’s large super computer was crazy . It ’s signaling between constituent had to be timed by prune long overseas telegram up to 1/16th of an column inch at a time by hand and was essentially interwoven with a giant infrigidation system .
Name : Cray-1
Year created : 1976
Divine : Cray Research , Inc.
Cost : $ 5 million to $ 10 million
Memory : 4MW semiconductor
upper : 160 MFLOP
Building supercomputers was a dream , an aspiration , and a aliveness ’s pursuit for Seymour Cray , and his work on the computers that stomach his name was the apogee of oeuvre he had done for the U.S. Navy , for CDC [ Control Data Corporation ] , and finally for his namesake caller . When Cray impart CDC in 1972 , after his work on the 6600 , 7600 , and minimally the 8600 , he take much of the supercomputer ardour with him .
While Cray ’s departure from CDC was n’t overly striking , his impact on supercomputing was . Cray artfully design computers so that each part shape to efficiently rush up the whole , and he usually did n’t rely on the new data-based part , preferring alternatively to pluck existing technologies for maximum performance . For illustration , the Cray-1 was the first Cray machine to use integrate circuits , despite their having been on the market for about a ten . At 160 MFLOPS , the Cray-1 was the libertine machine at the fourth dimension , and despite what seemed like only a recession market for expensive superfast machines , Cray Research sell more than a hundred of them .
Form and size were always concerns for Cray , as far back as his days developing the CDC 160 , which was built into an average desk . There was also a big concern with the heating system that could be generate by so many parts being packaged so tightly together , so Cray ’s designs typically involved unique cooling result , whether it be Freon on the Cray-1 , or Fluorinert , in which Cray-2 ’s circumference boards were immersed .
Core Memoryis a photographic exploration of theComputer History Museum ’s collection , foreground some of the most interesting pieces in the history of computers . These extract were used with license of the publisher . Special thanks to Fiona !
The pic in the book were carry byMark I. A. Richards , whose employment has appear in The New York Times Sunday Magazine , Fortune , Smithsonian , Life and BusinessWeek . The optic - confect is accompanied by description of each artifact to cover the characteristics and background of each aim , write by John Alderman who has cover the culture of in high spirits - tech life style since 1993 , notably for Mondo 2000 , HotWired and Wired News . A prolusion is bring home the bacon by the Computer History Museum ’s Senior Curator Dag Spicer .
Or go see the real things at theComputer History Museumin Mountain View , Calif.
Gizmodo ’ 79is a week - long celebration of gizmo and geekdom 30 years ago , as the analog eld gave way to the digital , and most of our favorite toys were just being born .
ComputersGizmodo 79Supercomputer
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