A Cray-1 Supercomputer Replica Built from 30 "Obsolete" Mac Minis
A Cray-1 supercomputer replica from 30 "obsolete" Mac Minis
Spain's Museo de Historia de la Computación has unveiled a 1:1 scale visual replica of the iconic 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer, powered by 30 Mac Minis from 2012–2014. The cluster delivers up to 1.5 teraflops across 70 cores, running macOS Mojave with MPI. Passive convection cooling keeps it nearly silent. The project, 18 months in the making, celebrates the 50th anniversaries of the Cray-1 and Apple, and the museum hopes to expand it to compete on the TOP500 list.
What was originally a purpose-built research machine has been re-created with consumer hardware that’s vastly more capable than the machine that inspired it.
- TrevorFSmith
I know it's pedantic but this is a tribute or a re-envisioning but it's not a replica.
- ginko
>The Cray-1 team hopes to fill the currently empty second half of the tower through a crowdfunding campaign to secure 70–80 additional M4 Mac Minis. The goal: create a cluster capable of ranking on the TOP500 supercomputers list.
Is ~100 Mac Minis really all it takes to get into the TOP500 these days?
- mrlonglong
They could rent out all that compute to subsidy the museum running costs.