Next time you pick up your smartphone - Cray-1 supercomputer (1978) vs i-Phone 13 (2022)

[Crossy]

 

[flyingtlger]

Apple FOREVER!

[JensenZ]

I'd be interested to find out in what year Cray Supercomputers caught up to the iPhone 15 Pro.

[jerrymahoney]

My favorite Cray story from the early 1980's (as told to me by a CRAY VP):

 

In those days, when an oil company or the government bought a CRAY computer, Cray would have a field rep on site part or full time. Exxon Research in Dallas said:

 

We want to buy 3. We want you to leave them on our loading dock, and we NEVER want to see you again.

[Crossy]

16 minutes ago, JensenZ said:

I'd be interested to find out in what year Cray Supercomputers caught up to the iPhone 15 Pro.

 

Incredibly, the early 2010's according to Bard.

 

Of course, we are comparing apples with elephants really, the architecture and I/O requirements are massively different.

 

[carlyai]

When I studied my Electronics and Communications diploma (60+ years ago) we had this massive computer that took up the whole room. Big transformers and big valves all lighting up for a 1 and off for a 0.

The input and output was a teletype writer.

Language was Basic.

You could give it a problem like 2+ 13 - 6/5, wait a couple of minuites and out printed the answer.

Brilliant.

 

Then latter on I worked on a real-time Collins Radio Company Computer and Control System.

Huge big rack, water cooled with Machine Language Programming.

We used to try and fix everything on site as with a major fault like the huge 65k, water cooled memory, cost a fortune to send it back from Australia  to Collins USA  to get fixed.

The memory was all these ferrite chores with the read, write and sense leads in the middle of the chores. 

Truely magnificant machine.

[lopburi3]

And in early 82 we had real personal computers, with C64 leading in sales.  Got one of the first production units and was my companion for a 2 year tour of duty in Conakry and then another 4 years in PI.  Was no expert but this was designed for those without such knowledge - type the text without error from magazine to program was a challenge however.

[tomazbodner]

9 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

And in early 82 we had real personal computers, with C64 leading in sales.  Got one of the first production units and was my companion for a 2 year tour of duty in Conakry and then another 4 years in PI.  Was no expert but this was designed for those without such knowledge - type the text without error from magazine to program was a challenge however.

There were many attempts to revive it, and several in various conditions are still available for sale on eBay. So is its successor, Amiga.

[Celsius]

3 minutes ago, tomazbodner said:

There were many attempts to revive it, and several in various conditions are still available for sale on eBay. So is its successor, Amiga.

 

Amiga. The one and only computer that truly impressed. It was the best machine ever made. I miss those old school US companies that delivered.

[lopburi3]

57 minutes ago, carlyai said:

Then latter on I worked on a real-time Collins Radio Company Computer

Did it have multi purpose hard drive platters?  Remember we used for coffee tables when damaged.

[carlyai]

1 hour ago, lopburi3 said:

Did it have multi purpose hard drive platters?  Remember we used for coffee tables when damaged.

No, hard disc, what was that.

Tape. :)

Was fun programming in 64 bit machine language.

[Lacessit]

Who remembers programs such as MINITAB? Apparently they are still a going concern in system analytics.

A steel mill I worked for in the 1970's had computer control of the hot rolling process, data was punched out and read using paper tape.

[Negita43]

I had a friend who was a techie for Cray (GCHQ had one in Cheltenham - top secret then but "de-secretised" in the mid eighties - his major piece of equipment was

- a soldering iron!

[BenStark]

5 hours ago, flyingtlger said:

Apple FOREVER!

 

Apple NEVER

[Crossy]

OK, let's nip the Apple Apple discussion right now, shall we?

 

Unless you want to talk about Apple-IIe or Lisa of course. 

[Crossy]

Speaking of Apple Lisa there's one in this computer BDSM Dungeon.

 

[BigStar]

Some of the comments to that vid on youtube are amusing. "The Cray looks way cooler" "Runs cooler too" "Comfortable to sit on" etc.

[novacova]

There are a few items I’d like to take back in time to the 70’s to reverse engineer including a stack of iPhones, cad printer a bag of silicon semiconductors and electronic diagrams 

[KhunBENQ]

On New Year day NIklas Wirth, famous computer scientist died.

He stated Wirth's law:

Quote

Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.

 

Some other

Quote

"What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away"

Or do you feel your computer has become faster with the latest Windows version

 

Quote

Gates's law ("The speed of software halves every 18 months"^[9])

 

Let a smartphone do nuclear weapons simulation and the bomb will not go up in months

[RayWright]

Back in '84 was working for a media entity and was tasked to get ready the Laptops that were going to be given to the various hacks who were going over to cover the Los Angeles Olympics. Seem to recall they were Texas Instruments TIPPC with Wordstar.

Articles were to be written in the field then transmitted via a modem back to London. The rubber handset coupler onto a telephone method.

In order to test the modems,  use to hack into the JANET network, back in the days before the InterWeb.

Cutting a long story short, didn't take much to find the JCL front loaders to the Cray at UCL for both Cambridge and UCL. So after a typical Friday 1980's lunch, say 3 hours, loaded a programme to calculate Pi, then did a runner. Checked on Monday and it wasn't running, couldn't find the log files as to how many iterations it ran for, so some Computer Operator obviously shut it down as someone's timed batch job didn't run as expected. I think they've tidied up their security since then.

Did meet Cray's UK Sales Manager at a party, early '90s and joked "Whats's your sales target for the year", "One" was the reply.

 

[KannikaP]

8 hours ago, flyingtlger said:

Apple FOREVER!

Or ANDROID.

[OneMoreFarang]

And look at the incredible things scientist did with those super computers from that time. And what people with so much powerful computers do with them now.

Imagine if only 1% of the users now would use half of the power which they have at their fingertips for something useful. 

[lopburi3]

8 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Imagine if only 1% of the users now would use half of the power which they have at their fingertips for something useful. 

[Lacessit]

11 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

And look at the incredible things scientist did with those super computers from that time. And what people with so much powerful computers do with them now.

Imagine if only 1% of the users now would use half of the power which they have at their fingertips for something useful. 

You mean instead of using them to post on ASEAN?

[Liverpool Lou]

9 hours ago, flyingtlger said:

Apple FOREVER!

Or any other smartphone.

[OneMoreFarang]

21 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

You mean instead of using them to post on ASEAN?

For posts on ASEAN I use my overclocked desktop PC. ;) 

[Negita43]

3 hours ago, Crossy said:

OK, let's nip the Apple Apple discussion right now, shall we?

I like Apple Pie and even more Apple and Blackberry Pie. Haven't liked Apple since the 11e was discontinued - just like I don't like Nanny Governments I don't like Nanny Phone Companies.

[Crossy]

Did someone mention Blackberry???

 

 

[Negita43]

Next Gen

My Backup for when the power fails

[ballpoint]

Back in the late 70s our school somehow got hold of an enormous mainframe that was ancient even back then.  It was programmed using punch cards.  I remember the teacher telling us we'd better get used to punching them if we wanted a job in computing in the future. 

(Now there are times when I'd happily punch my computer, but not in the way he meant).