Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A Desktop Version of a Classic Supercomputer?!?!?!

Normally I'd relegate posts  consisting of ranting about something I found on the internet to my tumblr account, but this was too good to post on a blog that no one reads.

*cough*NotThatThisIsMuchBetter*cough*

Excuse me... Anyways, while reading through posts in Google Reader, I saw what may be my favorite thing featured on Hack A Day to date.  Since this is coming via Hack A Day, many of you probably saw it already, but for those that haven't I present

A TINY CRAY-1:


That's right, Chris Fenton has created what amounts to a desktop-sized version of this classic supercomputing marvel.  It's 1/10 the size of the original, and sports an impressive 33MHz processor (the original only had 80MHz, so no scoffing!).  It's not the most useful of devices, but out of all the things I've ever said "I'd love to have one of those on my desk so people would ask what it is," this is probably the coolest.

It will be a while before I undertake this project, if I ever do, but it would definitely be worth it in my opinion. I mean, who hasn't wanted their own personal Cray? I know when I first heard about Cray supercomputers I immediately went to find out how much they cost so I could plan on buying one when I grew up and became rich (still waiting for this).

You can find more pictures, specs, and code (yes, code!) over at Chris Fenton's site.  Also, you can check out the Hack A Day article for some discussion in the comments.

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