nvkhkhr
Prime VIP
The original Cray-1 supercomputer
The Cray-1 supercomputer is one of the best known supercomputers ever made, first appearing in 1976 manufactured by Cray Research. It’s C-shape design with seating area is unforgettable. As with most supercomputers, it was a big machine, and would take up a large part of any room in your house.
Chris Fenton, an electrical engineer living in New York, always wanted his very own supercomputer, but did not have the space or money to acquire one. So he took a different approach and decided to build his own supercomputer from the 70s in scaled-down form based on the Cray-1.
The end result of his hacking produced a homebrew Cray-1A, which is 1/10th the size of the original. Unfortunately, getting software for the machine proved almost impossible. Fenton searched everywhere and eventually found out that SGI destroyed all the old software archives. Not even former Cray employees could help him.
The final design of the Cray-1A could not recreate the C-shape of the original due to the square shape of the Xilinix Spartan-3E 1600 development board at the heart of the system. But Fenton got around the problem by finishing off the circle around the main block. The finished machine can be seen below, which I’m sure you’ll agree is still true to the original:
If you’d like to make your own expect to shed some blood, sweat and tears just like Fenton did. Here’s a few words of guidance from the man himself along with an archive of the files you’ll need for your very own Cray:
All you need is a copy of the RTL (almost all Verilog-2001) and a Spartan-3 1600 or equivalent FPGA board. The code is likely riddled with bugs and questionable implementation choices at this point, so on the off-chance anyone actually downloads this, feel free to lend a hand and send me any bug fixes you might make
The Cray-1 supercomputer is one of the best known supercomputers ever made, first appearing in 1976 manufactured by Cray Research. It’s C-shape design with seating area is unforgettable. As with most supercomputers, it was a big machine, and would take up a large part of any room in your house.
Chris Fenton, an electrical engineer living in New York, always wanted his very own supercomputer, but did not have the space or money to acquire one. So he took a different approach and decided to build his own supercomputer from the 70s in scaled-down form based on the Cray-1.
The end result of his hacking produced a homebrew Cray-1A, which is 1/10th the size of the original. Unfortunately, getting software for the machine proved almost impossible. Fenton searched everywhere and eventually found out that SGI destroyed all the old software archives. Not even former Cray employees could help him.
The final design of the Cray-1A could not recreate the C-shape of the original due to the square shape of the Xilinix Spartan-3E 1600 development board at the heart of the system. But Fenton got around the problem by finishing off the circle around the main block. The finished machine can be seen below, which I’m sure you’ll agree is still true to the original:
If you’d like to make your own expect to shed some blood, sweat and tears just like Fenton did. Here’s a few words of guidance from the man himself along with an archive of the files you’ll need for your very own Cray:
All you need is a copy of the RTL (almost all Verilog-2001) and a Spartan-3 1600 or equivalent FPGA board. The code is likely riddled with bugs and questionable implementation choices at this point, so on the off-chance anyone actually downloads this, feel free to lend a hand and send me any bug fixes you might make
![[Hardeep]](https://www.unp.me/data/avatars/s/25/25527.jpg?1570213921){kind=avatar}