Museo de Historia de la Computación Unveils Cray-1 Supercomputer Replica Powered by Mac Minis
The Museo de Historia de la Computación in Spain has revealed a 1:1 scale visual replica of the iconic 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer. This ambitious project, developed over 18 months, serves as a 50th-anniversary tribute to the original Cray-1 and Apple's founding. Instead of using cutting-edge technology, the replica is powered by 30 'obsolete' 2012-era Mac Minis. These networked Mac Minis, comprising 64 active processing cores, achieve a combined performance of 1.3 teraflops, significantly surpassing the original Cray-1's peak theoretical performance of 160 megaflops. The system utilizes macOS Mojave (10.14) and its built-in support for MPI (Message Passing Interface) to orchestrate tasks across the cluster. The museum's visitors can observe the system running matrix algorithms in real-time, demonstrating the evolution of computer architecture.
