First supercomputer
Today, supercomputers help a person solve a mass of problems, including predicting the weather, deciphering DNA, and playing “His game.” And the first computer that came up with the name “supercomputer” celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. This is Cray-1.
Seymour Cray before starting work on the Cray-1 left the CDC computer manufacturer, becoming its direct competitor. In the work on the new machine, it was decided to abandon the transistors, choosing integrated circuits, and also abandon the multiprocessor system in favor of the vector processor. Instead of ferromagnetic cores, it was decided to use semiconductors for memory. This led to a positive result: the first tests of the system showed performance in 80x10 * 6 floating point operations per second.
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Peak performance Cray-1 was 133 Mflops. For comparison, the current number 1 in the rating of TOP500 supercomputers, Tianhe-2, has a computing capacity of 33.86 Pflops.
The processor of the machine consisted of 500 printed circuit boards, which were located on 144 chips on both sides. Total was 144 thousand chips. Freon was used to cool the car.
Supply system.
How the rack looks from the inside.
What do you think, who bought this supercomputer? As in the case of this computer for 97 million pounds , one of the first to consider the need to purchase such a powerful machine was the national meteorological service. So the National Atmospheric Research Center of the United States gave for the right to use the Cray-1 supercomputer with the serial number 003 as much as $ 8.86 million. Now, if you believe this calculator , this amount is approximately $ 39,784,472 with kopecks. So, residents of the United States owe the weather forecast from 1977 to 1989 for this particular car.
Seymour Cray is one of the first supercomputers at the University of California at Berkeley.
Cray-1 in the German Museum.
Seymour Cray before starting work on the Cray-1 left the CDC computer manufacturer, becoming its direct competitor. In the work on the new machine, it was decided to abandon the transistors, choosing integrated circuits, and also abandon the multiprocessor system in favor of the vector processor. Instead of ferromagnetic cores, it was decided to use semiconductors for memory. This led to a positive result: the first tests of the system showed performance in 80x10 * 6 floating point operations per second.
')
Peak performance Cray-1 was 133 Mflops. For comparison, the current number 1 in the rating of TOP500 supercomputers, Tianhe-2, has a computing capacity of 33.86 Pflops.
The processor of the machine consisted of 500 printed circuit boards, which were located on 144 chips on both sides. Total was 144 thousand chips. Freon was used to cool the car.
Supply system.
How the rack looks from the inside.
What do you think, who bought this supercomputer? As in the case of this computer for 97 million pounds , one of the first to consider the need to purchase such a powerful machine was the national meteorological service. So the National Atmospheric Research Center of the United States gave for the right to use the Cray-1 supercomputer with the serial number 003 as much as $ 8.86 million. Now, if you believe this calculator , this amount is approximately $ 39,784,472 with kopecks. So, residents of the United States owe the weather forecast from 1977 to 1989 for this particular car.
Seymour Cray is one of the first supercomputers at the University of California at Berkeley.
Cray-1 in the German Museum.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/362527/
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