30 years ago Cray Research in Chippewa Falls held an open house to showcase their world-class supercomputers. WEAU's Kathy Bissen takes us on a tour. Airdate: 6/8/1986
I remember having to write a database for a multi xmp system in the late 80s for some South American theme park. Seemed overkill to me like they would have had to be trying to sequence DNA with that kind of computing power but I didn't ask questions.
In the future we'll have machines many thousands of times faster than the Cray II that will be used to look at degeneracy on a thing called TikTok and Instagram.
Can't be. That would mean humanity is doomed. Surely technology will elevate mankind as soon as the new millennium begins. 2000 will be a great year. In 2020 we will all be superhuman beings.
I would have snuck in and taken pictures with my iPhone to steal some of that sweet 80s technology, even though my phone would be hundreds if not thousands of times more powerful than that whole room filled with Cray Cray, I am sure that 80s cop would have been hot on my tail
From what is said in the video, our smartphones now have the same order of magnitude in computational power, in term of speed and memory, than this Cray, not hundreds or thousands of times more.
I wonder about that. Your 640 Kib sounds correct per my memory. I googled, and read the Cray 2 had 256 million words, words were 64 bits. So more like 2 GB?
@@michaelbauers8800 2 GB system-wide, since the Cray-2 had four CPUs which did not share memory between them, each one had access to 512 MB of RAM. This is in contrast to modern multi-core CPUs, with each core having access to the entire pool of RAM on demand.
Might have been counting system storage as ram, could throw all the money and development expertise at designing these supercomputers, who could have foreseen the worldwide demand and incentive for companies to compete to bring technology to the masses?
I've seen this thing in person at the Arts et Métiers in Paris, beautiful machine.
Gotta love the super toxic coolant 😀
The cop at 1:16 - the typical 80's look!
It is inert my dad used to bring some for cleaning etc.. it would quickly vaporize and cool your hand if you poured a little on the palm.
Built many of these parts and assemblies.
I was just listening to the Pointer Sisters' "Automatic" with the "Cray Vision" reference, great sound, beat!
I think it's "X-Ray" vision.
Nol&knowoolSra10plux
I remember having to write a database for a multi xmp system in the late 80s for some South American theme park. Seemed overkill to me like they would have had to be trying to sequence DNA with that kind of computing power but I didn't ask questions.
In the future we'll have machines many thousands of times faster than the Cray II that will be used to look at degeneracy on a thing called TikTok and Instagram.
FeeCharTSszz
Can't be. That would mean humanity is doomed. Surely technology will elevate mankind as soon as the new millennium begins. 2000 will be a great year. In 2020 we will all be superhuman beings.
One day we're going to have this much power just sitting in front of us on a desk it's going to be awesome
PCryzenIntrl!
I read this as a humorous comment, because I'm sure you know that we all have this much power (and more) in our smartphones.
At my old job in chippewa falls we used to dismantle stuff for cray
I would have snuck in and taken pictures with my iPhone to steal some of that sweet 80s technology, even though my phone would be hundreds if not thousands of times more powerful than that whole room filled with Cray Cray, I am sure that 80s cop would have been hot on my tail
From what is said in the video, our smartphones now have the same order of magnitude in computational power, in term of speed and memory, than this Cray, not hundreds or thousands of times more.
It looks so dated know, amazing how much technology just keeps moving on.
32,000 IBM computers? If 640 KiB, we can assume that was on the order of 24 GiB of RAM.
I wonder about that. Your 640 Kib sounds correct per my memory. I googled, and read the Cray 2 had 256 million words, words were 64 bits. So more like 2 GB?
@@michaelbauers8800 2 GB system-wide, since the Cray-2 had four CPUs which did not share memory between them, each one had access to 512 MB of RAM. This is in contrast to modern multi-core CPUs, with each core having access to the entire pool of RAM on demand.
@@elimalinsky7069 Ah yes, sort of the opposite of the "NUMA" system I work with at work
Might have been counting system storage as ram, could throw all the money and development expertise at designing these supercomputers, who could have foreseen the worldwide demand and incentive for companies to compete to bring technology to the masses?
Awesome
What?
50 tonnes of coolant?
I don’t know where they got that. There was about one cubic meter of Fluorinert coolant, which would weigh about 4000 lbs, or two short tons.
CobolzMezA9
The Goodyear MPP and the Maspar were vastly superior machines
Atyavilág, akkor mi lenne az én samsung Z flip4-em akkor? Összecsukom zsebre vágom és akkora mint egy cigis doboz. Elképesztő a fejlődés.
Cestpier
Can we talk about that dude's corsage
A desktop[ computer in 2024 can do x500 times that (excluding the GPU graphics)