The Museo de Historia de la Computación in Spain has unveiled a 1:1 scale visual replica of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer, built using 30 2012-era Mac Minis as a 50th-anniversary tribute to the Cray-1 and Apple’s founding. Developed over 18 months, the cluster achieves 1.3 teraflops in recent tests, peaking at 1.5 teraflops before one node failed, far exceeding the original Cray-1’s 160 megaflops. Five units are quad-core i7s and 25 are dual-core i5s, networked to combine 64 active processing cores.
Benchmarks used a custom matrix-multiplication Python script. Unlike the original’s vector processing, the replica uses parallel cluster architecture via macOS Mojave (10.14) and MPI for inter-node communication. The system runs silently thanks to passive convection cooling with steel rack and aluminum trays.
Visitors can watch real-time matrix algorithm execution, illustrating the evolution from purpose-built supercomputers to consumer hardware clusters. The replica includes the iconic padded bench seating of the original Cray-1.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing