Cray should make a gaming computer for the rest of us
Supercomputer legend Cray is partnered with Microsoft to make the CX1, a desktop Windows HPC Server 2008 box that runs from $6,000 to $60,000, depending on configuration. This hunk of pure horsepower can bury up to 16 processors in 64GB of RAM per node: it is not for running World of Warcraft. At least not the client.
That said, if you're going to make supercomputers within a few grand of consumer feasibility, why not make a boutique consumer box? A Cray desktop PC? Sweet!
Perhaps not.
A real-deal licensed Cray-for-consumers should be a miniature replica of the Cray-II, complete with cooling fountain:
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Reminds me of the guy who said: "You know, when you buy a computer of this size, you get to choose the color."
I'm looking at the picture of the Cray2 and thinking "if movies have taught us anything, it's to NEVER put any red lights into electronics."
Actually, they start at $25,000 not $6,000. Slightly more than an Underground gap away from your better gaming rigs.
Why am I not a millionaire T_T?
One slow afternoon I asked a pair of Chirpsithra about intelligent computers.
"Oh yes, we built them," one said. "Long ago."
"You gave up? Why?"
One of the salmon-colored aliens made a chittering sound. The other said, "Reason enough. Machines should be proper servants. They should not talk back. Especially they should not presume to instruct their masters. Still, we did not throw away the knowledge we gained from the machines."
-From "The Schumann Computer" by Larry Niven
Funny story about legendary supercomputer maker Cray, it died in the nineties after Seymour did a barrel roll in his jeep.
SGI bought up the the "business unit" and eventually sold it off to a 20-person unit in Seattle called Tera Computing, who now wears its dismembered corpse like a shawl over its skin.
Check out the wikipedia articles.
...Yeah, but I can speak from experience that *NOTHING* beat the XMP-24 for performance *and* the fact that it actually had *SEATS* on the damn thing. It looked more like some sort of glass-and-steel industrial park fountain, complete with a cushioned place to rest your butt while the fluid dynamics of molten steel were being computated behind your back!
"Funny story about legendary supercomputer maker Cray, it died in the nineties after Seymour did a barrel roll in his jeep."
...twern't nothing funny about it, McGee. The loss of Seymour Cray was more than a blow to the company from which it never recovered, the whole supercomputing industry lost its primary influence and guiding light. The punk who was driving like a maniac deserved more than a citation for "careless driving causing serious bodily injury" for his crime.
A lot more people mourned Seymour Cray than they ever will for Steve Jobs.