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This was one of the most powerful supercomputers in the early 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aDh8zg50uI Skip to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aDh8zg50uI&t=1237s - Explanation of the 3D torus architecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aDh8zg50uI&t=3163s - Sweet, sweet hardware https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aDh8zg50uI&t=3237s - That PE removal shim  The power supplies themselves are liquid-cooled and can provide up to 1800 amps each. Three-Phase has a new favorite as of 01:43 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 01:40
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Since they don't seem to like to show the exterior of the Machine: Bah. the only good Crays are the ones with built-in seating.  And I know it's hard to compare because normal computers do an entirely different set of operations from big iron, but ... probably not as good as you'd hope as a Bitcoin-mining rig. (I'm not entirely sure how these things go, but I think maybe old-school supercomputers are more akin to modern GPUs than CPUs in operation?) Chillbro Baggins has a new favorite as of 04:30 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 04:27
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Stunning. Water cooled power supplies, Cray would laugh at the modern water cooled 800w ones. What's the point of those. They can run passive air cooled up to 400w or so continuosly anyway. It's too soon to post the connection machine again, isn't it.
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Aug 10, 2017 06:38
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As somebody who builds industrial equipment let me tell you people want it to look cool for some reason.
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Aug 10, 2017 07:29
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ColHannibal posted:As somebody who builds industrial equipment let me tell you people want it to look cool for some reason. It makes sense for supercomputers, since they are big investments and will be featured in their press releases and news stories and maybe even campus tours. I guess something similar goes for any expensive purchase.
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Aug 10, 2017 09:17
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Computer viking posted:It makes sense for supercomputers, since they are big investments and will be featured in their press releases and news stories and maybe even campus tours. I guess something similar goes for any expensive purchase. Everyone with a baller system is dying to have people go 'oooo aaaa' Hmmmm, full PCs inside a monitor is a thing, so is in a desk, but what about inside a gaming chair so you can think you are like a technician sitting on a Cray. That would be cray cray.. (gently caress I hate myself for saying that).
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Aug 10, 2017 11:43
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Computer viking posted:It makes sense for supercomputers, since they are big investments and will be featured in their press releases and news stories and maybe even campus tours. I guess something similar goes for any expensive purchase. Pretty much. If I sign off a $500k purchase, at some point the board of directors are going to want to look at it to see where their money went. They aren't going to be impressed at a large, grey slab, even if I tell them that the new XL500 is twice as fast as the old XL400. It needs to be exciting, with flashing technical bits. - even if that large panel of blue LEDS added an extra $10k onto the final price.
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Aug 10, 2017 13:04
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spog posted:Pretty much. Manufacturers know this which is why that blue LED panel was a $10k option that cost them maybe $200 to produce
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Aug 10, 2017 13:23
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spog posted:Pretty much. I sell 3+ million dollar liquid cooled computers and they are white with a stripe on them. People argue about the stripe.
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Aug 11, 2017 02:29
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Does the stripe make it go faster? I'm positive you've never heard that one.
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Aug 11, 2017 08:06
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Snorkzilla posted:Does the stripe make it go faster? I'm positive you've never heard that one. Red stripe makes it faster, but the yellow one is more expensive. With blue stripe, you get better results.
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Aug 11, 2017 08:23
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What if I need more precision? Can stripes be combined? Also can you make it $250k better? Budget year ends soon and we can't be under budget we just can't.
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Aug 11, 2017 08:43
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ColHannibal posted:I sell 3+ million dollar liquid cooled computers and they are white with a stripe on them. Hmm if you could supply one with both a horizontal and a vertical stripe, that would be a huge plus.
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Aug 11, 2017 08:48
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Jerry Cotton posted:Hmm if you could supply one with both a horizontal and a vertical stripe, that would be a huge plus. I literally groaned out loud. Well done.
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Aug 11, 2017 08:51
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For real though bikeshedding is a cancer
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Aug 11, 2017 09:03
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Jerry Cotton posted:Hmm if you could supply one with both a horizontal and a vertical stripe, that would be a huge plus.
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Aug 11, 2017 09:09
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Der Kyhe posted:Red stripe makes it faster, but the yellow one is more expensive. With blue stripe, you get better results. Ahh, choices. At first, there was no choice. Salesman: “Alright, this is it. It’s big and grey and it sometimes catches fire.” Customer: “Right! Do you have any that aren’t grey?” Salesman: “No.” Customer: “Or that don’t catch fire?” Salesman: “No.” Customer: “Alright! I’ll take it.” Salesman: “Right you are. Do you want a fire extinguisher with that?” Customer: “Eh...” Salesman: “Trust me, you do.” Then, there was not enough choice. Salesman: “Alright, there’s two kinds. There’s the big grey ones which sometimes catch fire or the small brown ones which don’t work.” Customer: “Right! I’ll take the big grey one I suppose!” Salesman: “And your usual fire extinguisher?” Customer: “Please.” Then, for about five minutes, there was just enough choice. Salesman: “Alright, you can have a big one or a small one and you can have it red, blue, or green. The red ones sometimes catch fire, the small ones don’t work, the big green one only works in Russian and the small red one comes with a cupholder!” Customer: “Right! Well I want one that works and doesn’t catch fire and I don’t speak Russian so I’ll take the big blue one!” Salesman: “Ok but you did hear me say the red small one has a cupholder?” Customer: “But it catches fire and doesn’t work...” Salesman: “The cupholder works. Until it burns off.” Customer: “I’ll take the big blue one.” And then, almost immediately, there was too much choice. Salesman: “Alright, you can have a red one, a blue one, a yellow one, a purple one, an ochre one or an invisible one. That come in big, small, medium, extra medium, micro, giga and vast. The medium and above ones in primary colors have semi-rotating arms, but aren’t waterproof except for the vast yellow ones which are waterproof but explode. They all have cupholders, except the ochre ones, but none of them have cups, except the giga ones. The cupholders on the invisible ones aren’t invisible, unless you buy online, in which case the cupholder goes invisible but the thing itself stops being invisible. As in that case the invisible one is now visible you can have it in any of the above colors except purple unless you have an extra medium but the formerly invisible purple extra medium ones with invisible cupholders are... evil. Which would you like?” Customer: “I’ve no idea! And I’ve spend three days comparing them all on ‘which thing dot com’. And I’ve done a spreadsheet but I don’t understand the spreadsheet. And all I know is whichever one I get I won’t enjoy it because I’ll be constantly worrying whether I should’ve got one of the others instead!” Salesman: “Aha! Then perhaps you’ll be interested in this! This is from our classic range!” Customer: “Oh look, a big grey one! My mum used to have one like that! Awh! Does it still catch fire?” Salesman: “Only if you pay extra.” Customer: “I’ll take it.”
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Aug 11, 2017 11:39
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Jerry Cotton posted:Hmm if you could supply one with both a horizontal and a vertical stripe, that would be a huge plus.
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Aug 11, 2017 14:53
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DigitalRaven posted:Ahh, choices. At first, there was no choice. But enough about Bad Dragon.
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Aug 11, 2017 15:21
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I used to be an Optic fibre Engineer, one particular install I worked was for a major UK Bank, their Server Farm had one of those Cray seats in a horrid tan colour, It was surrounded by a bunch of traffic cones and plastic fences with more than a few signs explaining that sitting on it was instant dismissal. The site manager informed me not to breath near it as it was incredibly temperamental and for every second it was down would cost the bank millions. I believed him. Was odd to see in a room that was for the most part brand new cabs/servers.
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Aug 11, 2017 15:29
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Sixty million pounds minimum a minute buys you a lot better downtime solutions than that, sheesh.
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Aug 11, 2017 16:45
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shovelbum posted:Sixty million pounds minimum a minute buys you a lot better downtime solutions than that, sheesh. Its probably because it is old as balls system, with connections to who knows where, storing *something* no-one is fully certain of exactly what, and an integral component to anyone's guess of other systems, built entirely on programming language for which no longer exists any sane developers, running on a custom OS which has not been supported in the last two decades. So basically, everyone prays for God, Buddha, Satan or whoever that the system lasts for another 10 years, to the next complete (already overdue) overhaul of the entire IT infra, buyout, merger or bankruptcy. Its also not about the costs per se, but the fact that once put offline, there is a non-zero possibility that it no longer goes back online. And then the bank loses some data and some functionality, but nobody is certain what that actually is.
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Aug 11, 2017 17:08
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Are there any situations where the legacy hardware goes on the fritz and it turns out it hadn't been doing anything but drawing power since '93 or something?
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Aug 11, 2017 17:20
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Are there any situations where the legacy hardware goes on the fritz and it turns out it hadn't been doing anything but drawing power since '93 or something? I've never seen one personally, but I have definitely heard stories. One in particular stands out is the "no-no box." I got brought on as a sort of "temporary engineering assistant" (read: "go make cables, new guy") at a local broadcast TV station that was in the middle of an upgrade ages ago, and the big story everyone was telling was about this machine that had been running alone in a closet for longer than any current employee had been working there. "Don't go near the thing, and don't even look at it, or the errant photons will lock it up and then we're in big trouble!" was the standard advice. Except nobody knew what the drat thing did. I was shown a faded Polaroid with someone standing in front of it from god knows when, and the best I've got was someone built...something out of spare parts and put it in what looked like an old RAID tower? The legend goes that it was--in fact--drawing power, but only enough to light up a standby LED. Someone at some point unplugged it, and the world didn't explode, so out in the recycling pile it went. In all likelihood it was a normal RAID tower for backups, but with video engineers, who the hell knows?
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Aug 11, 2017 17:41
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Even today video is more black magic than science. Once had one TV out of a set of six that didn't like HDMI from our DAs so we split the SDI source, ran that through a converter to back to HDMI and that for some reason worked. Audio signal and to a lesser extent lighting signal is a precious, well-behaved baby compared to video. HDMI remains the loving devil. e: HDMI: the new hi-def cable, common in most applications, the loving devil. SDI: round cable with a single wire, the kind used in the antenna hookup on most tvs from like the 80s until the 00s or so, usually either with BNC or a threaded connector. with the right adapters can be interchanged with coax. DA: Distribution amplifier, a thing what takes a signal, splits it multiple times, and then spits it back out so you can have a bunch of devices receiving the same signal if the fuckin' thing is working right. Grand Prize Winner has a new favorite as of 17:57 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 17:53
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Are there any situations where the legacy hardware goes on the fritz and it turns out it hadn't been doing anything but drawing power since '93 or something? If nothing goes wrong how can you tell its now working?
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Aug 11, 2017 17:53
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HDMI kills me. "Okay so we're fighting piracy. To that end, we have a new cable. It will insure without a doubt nobody can make illegal copies of content delivered through it." "So if I google 'Guardians of the Galaxy Blu-ray torrent' I won't see any results then?" "....umm, sure. Yeah. Just buy it and implement it. It will in no way infuriate law-abiding consumers by making their displays not work half the time and will completely put a stop to illegal duplication of whatever Harvey Weinstein has his fingers in today." "SOUNDS GOOD"
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Aug 11, 2017 18:13
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Even today video is more black magic than science. Once had one TV out of a set of six that didn't like HDMI from our DAs so we split the SDI source, ran that through a converter to back to HDMI and that for some reason worked. Wasn't a Samsung by any chance? We had just bought a 4k TV for when some suits came in to look at rushes (this was a few years back when 4k was hot biz) but the fucker wouldn't display anything running out of the deck until on a whim I plugged it into an HDMI splitter first.
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Aug 11, 2017 19:05
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Banks and airlines were the first big corporate entities to computerize so they have some really terrible old legacy hardware/software. Back in the 90's all of our branch transactions were put on 8 inch floppies that were rotated on a weekly basis. One of the drives busted and I was supposed to transport the floppies to another branch for backup and I left them in a hot car. poo poo. Different branch/bank, we upgraded from tiny 5 inch monochrome CRT's with 10keys to actual PC's with 15 inch color monitors and everything. Problem was the bank software only worked on Windows 3.1, so that's what we were using when I finally left in 2000. And this was new bank software. GOTTA STAY FAI posted:HDMI kills me. I had a near lightning strike that half fried the HDMI port on my Tivo. I say half-fried because it only killed the copy protection. Before then I never even realized HDMI had copy protection. The unit otherwise worked, but it wouldn't accept input it couldn't validate. Which was all input.
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Aug 11, 2017 19:24
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I had a power surge fry one of the HDMI ports on my monitor. The other HDMI, VGA and DVI ports are all fine. Weird thing is, both HDMI ports were connected to devices that were off, and at the time of the surge it was on the VGA input.
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Aug 11, 2017 19:48
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HDMI is the loving devil.Lizard Combatant posted:Wasn't a Samsung by any chance? It was either a Samsung or a Vizio, we use both pretty interchangeably. Not even doing 4k, pretty sure our feed was straight 1080.
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Aug 11, 2017 19:56
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HDMI is still better than component, where *one* of the five plugs always works its way loose and then you have to reach back in the dark so you can't see the colors and try to figure out which one it is. If you got rid of HDCP it'd be perfect.
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Aug 11, 2017 20:29
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:HDMI kills me. HDCP is some loving bullshit. HDMI I like the idea of - digital video and audio in one single cable? Sign me up! ... oh, it doesn't like my TV, so all black picture. Nevermind then, gently caress you HDMI! Or, it's like my PS3 upstairs, where the handshake fails every few minutes, causing the screen to go black for a second or two. I'm guessing that the powers that be will learn nothing from how pointless and intrusive HDCP was, and the next standard will just make things worse. OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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Aug 11, 2017 21:02
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Code Jockey posted:Or, it's like my PS3 upstairs, where the handshake fails every few minutes, causing the screen to go black for a second or two. I was getting this with my PC until I swapped in a new cable. Give that a shot if you haven't already.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:11
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Toast Museum posted:I was getting this with my PC until I swapped in a new cable. Give that a shot if you haven't already. HDMI cables die all the loving time. When we used VGA we could re-use a hundred foot cable for about two-three years before it got too clapped out, but our new 100' HDMI cables, which cost like one and a half times as much, average about maybe six months of the same use.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:25
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Grand Prize Winner posted:HDMI cables die all the loving time. When we used VGA we could re-use a hundred foot cable for about two-three years before it got too clapped out, but our new 100' HDMI cables, which cost like one and a half times as much, average about maybe six months of the same use. Don't you need an active signal booster for anything over like 40-50 feet with HDMI?
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Aug 11, 2017 21:26
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I haven't seen that here. We have a ton of conference rooms with cables from the table under the floor up the wall to the TV. Same cable for a few years now. We get all ours from Monoprice.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:27
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It looks like Monoprice makes 100ft HDMI both with and without a built-in signal booster. That might just be your issue.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:30
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Kelp Me! posted:It looks like Monoprice makes 100ft HDMI both with and without a built-in signal booster. That might just be your issue. All ours, AFAIK, have boosters on 'em. In all honesty I don't know what kind of fail rate we have on 'em but they're monoprice and everyone on the crew bitches about 'em. We had three fail on us in one night, I was there for that. As a result we tend to use SDI converters and wall-powered SDI boosters for any really long runs now. We do more outdoor than indoor events though, that probably puts more wear and tear on 'em.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:41
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It's only tangential, but funny (at least to me): I used to work for a Giant Computer Company. Back when it was started, the company didn't make/sell any enterprise hardware so our website, order management/processing, and all other back-end services ran on servers (old-school big iron) bought from... our competitors who played in both consumer and enterprise tech. A few years later we moved into enterprise ourselves, but at that point the old servers were so embedded in our infrastructure that replacing them with our own tech would have been a humongous, fantastically expensive project. Not to mention the downtime we'd experience during the switchover. So for something like 15 years, the company kept running on competitors' hardware, with occasional vendor maintenance visits done under the cover of darkness, arriving to our facilities in unmarked vans. Eventually -- after several false starts -- they replaced both the hardware and OS, and probably made some consulting firm's director stupid rich along the way. When I heard it had actually happened (I left a few years ago) I seriously couldn't believe they managed to do it and keep the lights on.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:49
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