Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "The Rise and Fall of the Cray Supercomputer" video.

  1. Only among conspiracy nuts.
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  2. It isn't wire-wrap.
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  3. Hand wired, actually. Lots of parts were made in the normal way.
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  4. The Peripheral Processors were interesting, too. The 6600 is usually described as having had ten PPUs, but there was actually just one processor which time-multiplexed ten memories and ten sets of registers. It was an ingenious way of making the system more compact.
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  5. There was no helium in the Cray computers. The Cray-1 and X-MP were cooled with ordinary refrigerant, like the CDC 6000 and 7000 machines. The Cray-2 used liquid immersion cooling with fluorinert.
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  6. My career was in computers, but I've worked as a janitor. Nothing wrong with that.
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  7. It isn't comfortable.
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  8. I remember that APL interpreter. The CDC 3600 was my first computer, then the 6500.
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  9.  @denniss1211 — Florinert is what was used in the Cray 2 for liquid immersion cooling. The earlier machines used conventional refrigeration technology.
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  10. The bench on the early Cray-1 machines is the housing for power and cooling equipment. Using them as seats was an afterthought.
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  11. I agree. There is nothing comical about old technologies.
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  12. It isn't very good as furniture, actually.
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  13. Floating point operations per second (FLOPS) was the usual way of comparing scientific computers.
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  14. No, not all the codes. The USA cracked Japanese diplomatic and naval codes.
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  15. I don't think so. If you listen to one of the few talks he gave that are on YT, you will see that he was a regular guy, but very smart and creative, and dedicated to his work.
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  16. He wanted the fastest computer, not the biggest. I would not call any of the machines before the CDC 6600 a "supercomputer." I never heard anyone call the 1604 a supercomputer.
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  17. I worked at that computer center and received my CS master's in 1976. I was still working there when you were in the program.
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  18. That's why Cray brought in John Rollwagen early on.
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  19. He didn't want to build the biggest, although he did have to put a larger memory on the Cray-2.
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  20. I used a Teletype to communicate with a computer ca. 1970, but I don't remember ever thinking that was "high tech." They were old tech by then.
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  21. No. There are two increment units.
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  22. I was in the CS program at MSU (class of 1971) and never heard that rumour. I expect the administration would have had their own computer even if they had used the same type. By the way, the academic computer was not limited to engineering. Any college could use it.
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  23. There are no vector instructions in the CDC 6000-series computers, although the Cyber-70 models, a variant of the 6000, had a compare/move unit which operated on strings, which are vectors of characters.
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  24. The Data General computer is the console.
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  25. How you assign priority depends on how you define the machine. For example, Zuse's first machine was electromechanical, not electronic. Tha Atanasoff-Berry Computer was electronic, but it was a special purpose machine.
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  26. Wrong. The CDC 6600 and the Cray-1 were works of genius. Cray was their chief designer. They were far ahead of other machines of the time, and great successes. His later work was not as significant, but one person cannot lead an entire industry for his entire life. Who does that?
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  27. The Cray name has been passed to other companies. The connection to Cray Research, Inc. and Seymour Cray is tenyous.
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  28. Not a very good one. The bench housed power and cooling equipment. It had padded seat covers so you could sit on it, but I wouldn't call it a "couch."
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