[HN Gopher] Cray Simulator (X-MP, Y-MP-el, J90, SV1)
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       Cray Simulator (X-MP, Y-MP-el, J90, SV1)
        
       Author : throwawaybutwhy
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2022-01-29 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | jensgk wrote:
       | Cool, is there any application software for it?
        
         | blackhaz wrote:
         | Can it run Doom?
        
           | retrac wrote:
           | Well, Carmack took the question at least a little seriously.
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25494648
           | 
           | tl;dr: Quite probably. It's certainly fast enough, but it's
           | an awkward beast without byte-addressed memory. (Also,
           | there's the minor problem that there's no video hardware.)
        
       | johnklos wrote:
       | We used to compare the speed of new & fast computers to the VAX
       | 11/780, then to the Cray-1. Now we can buy a computer that
       | exceeds the speed and memory of a Cray-1 for $10 and lose it in
       | between couch cushions.
       | 
       | What we're missing, though, is excitement about this. Tell a
       | group of high schoolers in the mid '80 that they'd have a chance
       | to run whatever they wanted on a Cray-1 for an hour, and they'd
       | come up with all sorts of ideas. Today? They have all this power
       | and much, much more, but most people don't care very much.
       | 
       | It's a real shame that Cray supercomputers were used to model
       | weather, to calculate ideal parameters for fusion experiments, to
       | design other computer systems, to start the computer visual
       | effects world, yet we have so little software from these
       | machines.
       | 
       | I'm very happy to see this preservation effort.
        
         | protomyth wrote:
         | DOE used to run a high school student summer program for a week
         | at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The students would
         | get to program on one of the Crays that the lab had. They even
         | got to print out documentation (paper and microfiche).
        
         | throwawayboise wrote:
         | I was in High School when the Cray X-MP was the world's fastest
         | computer. There were a few nerds in my physics class that
         | talked about it, but the vast majority of the high school would
         | have had no idea what it was nor would they have found it
         | interesting.
        
       | cridenour wrote:
       | Been reading Jurassic Park for the first time and love their
       | shock and awe that InGen had shipped _multiple_ XMPs to their
       | island.
        
         | geenew wrote:
         | "A multi xmp system?!" is the quote I think. That line always
         | stuck with me. Kind of a disappointment really that the movie
         | had a thinking machine instead of a cray; the thinking machine
         | had a lot of blinkenlights but the cray was always cooler imho.
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-29 23:01 UTC)