{"id":26548,"date":"2019-11-02T11:09:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-02T16:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=26548"},"modified":"2019-11-02T12:42:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T17:42:47","slug":"because-no-ones-done-it-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/11\/02\/because-no-ones-done-it-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Because No One’s Done It Before?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I present to you the chance to work on a desktop version of the Cray-1<\/em><\/a>, by Craig Fenton:<\/p>\n

As part two (see previous attempt<\/a>) of my ongoing series in \u2018computational necromancy,\u2019 I\u2019ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1\/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the \u201cbecause I can!\u201d category \u2013 I was poking around the internet one day looking for a Cray emulator and came up dry, so I decided to do something about it. Luckily, the\u00a0Cray-1 hardware reference manual\u00a0<\/a>turned out to be useful enough that implementing most of this was pretty straightforward. The Cray-1 is one of those\u00a0iconic<\/em>\u00a0machines that just makes you say \u201cNow\u00a0that<\/em>\u2018s<\/em>\u00a0a super computer!\u201d Sure, your iPhone is 10X faster, and it\u2019s completely useless to own one, but admit it . . you really want one, don\u2019t you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not really, but Wow<\/strong>. There’s software emulation, but this guy’s doing it in hardware using a FPGA<\/strong> (Field Programmable Gate Array<\/strong><\/a>). They permit customized computer platform to be built in the field. I briefly looked at FPGAs<\/strong> for implementing some work project, of which I’ve mostly forgotten, but that work environment was too unstable to accomplish anything. A pity about that.<\/p>\n

This was from the era when computers had presence<\/em>. Here’s the old Cray-1A<\/em> from Computing History<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They note:<\/p>\n

In 1975 the 80 MHz Cray-1 was announced. Excitement was so high that a bidding war for the first machine broke out between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the latter eventually winning and receiving serial number 001 in 1976 for a six-month trial. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) was Cray Research’s first official customer in July 1977, paying US$8.86 million ($7.9 million plus $1 million for the disks) [or roughly $38 million in 2018 dollars]. The NCAR machine was decommissioned in January 1979.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here’s Fenton’s Civil War re-enactment piece:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Geek on!<\/p>\n

[H\/T Kevin M]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I present to you the chance to work on a desktop version of the Cray-1, by Craig Fenton: As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in \u2018computational necromancy,\u2019 I\u2019ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1\/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26553,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26548\/revisions\/26553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}