Cray-1 vs Raspberry Pi

When I see comparisons like this, the first thought I have is not the benchmarks, but rather what the most “heroic” real-world calculation of the day would have been on something like the Cray-1, and how to replicate those calculations today on something like a RPi. Weather&#x2F;climate models? Rad-hydro?<p>The fidelity would almost certainly be super low compared to modern FEA software, but it would be a fun exercise to try.

I knew a guy who worked at one of the national labs that had its own Cray-1 supercomputer, in a machine room with a big observation window that visitors could admire it through.<p>Just before a big tour group of VIPs he knew would come by, he hid inside the Cray-1, and waited patiently for them to arrive.<p>Then he casually strolled out from inside the Cray-1, pulling up the zipper of his jeans, with a sheepish relieved expression on his face, looked up startled at the tour group gaping at him through the window, and scurried off!

Is there any software apart from benchmarks that will make it feel that fast. All softwares that I use feel more advanced version of things that I ran on my 386. GUI, IDE, compiler, office...<p>I understand that the exercise may still be theoretical as any sw used by Met now will be designed for million time fast computers. But there should exist some software that would have required Cray to run then.

I&#x27;m waiting for the follow-up from Jeff Geerling where he fits a Raspberry Pi into a Cray-1 enclosure.

It&#x27;d make more sense to compare with a RISC-V that has Vector 1.0.<p>Because a vector machine is what it was.

The RPi, unlike the Cray-1, does not offer ample sitting space.

I&#x27;d just bought the latest and most expensive Intel x86 CPU in 2013 and built myself a new rig. My wife walked into the office, &quot;You&#x27;re not working, I can tell that, but I&#x27;m not sure what you&#x27;re doing?&quot; she said looking at the graphs on my screen.<p>&quot;I&#x27;m calculating to see when my PC would have been the fastest on Earth. It looks like in 1992 it would be able to out-compute the latest Dept of Defense $90m supercomputer that filled an entire room, would you believe?&quot;<p>&quot;That&#x27;s lovely. How will that help us pay our credit bills?&quot;<p>Jesting aside. There is a bunch of data for this, like this set here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TOP500" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TOP500</a><p>And if you extrapolate backwards or find older data, like I did, I came to the conclusion that if I took my PC back to 1981 it would actually be faster than every computer on Earth combined, or some insane statistic like that.

The Cray-1 has a much better couch.

TL; DR: ten years ago, Raspberry Pis and Android phones were a handful times faster. Nowadays, they are around 100 times faster. Pretty impressive, considering they fit in our pockets.

I ran some comparisons a few years ago between a SPARCstation 20 Model 60 (the system for which the BYTE UNIX Benchmark is calibrated) and Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10795324">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10795324</a><p>An original RPi is who it 6-7x the performance of a SPARCstation 20 according to the benchmarks

I remember watching a TV program about wave&#x2F;fluid simulation (real time?) as a wow-wee demonstration of the power of a Cray-1.<p>In the meantime plenty of colleges and companies were running entire departments on a PDP-11 that had a fraction of the power.<p>Raspberry Pi faster than a Cray-1 is cool benchmark of how far we have come! The Cray had built-in seating though, which the Pi doesn&#x27;t! :-)

It&#x27;s wild to imagine that 40 or so years from now, someone will have a drawer full of cheap plastic boxes, each with more power than the fastest computing cluster of 2023... promising to themselves that one day they&#x27;re finally going to build that hobby project with one of them.

The pi Pico would be an interesting comparison.<p>It doesn&#x27;t have an fpu, and not much ram so it might actually be a close race for some of these tests.

Recognizing the domain, you can read about the early history of benchmarks: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roylongbottom.org.uk&#x2F;whetstone.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roylongbottom.org.uk&#x2F;whetstone.htm</a>

Years ago when my daughter was around 5 I was showing her a raspberry Pi zero I had just picked up. I told her - years ago before Daddy was your age a computer like this used to be as big as a house. Her response was - “houses were that small?”

There&#x27;s a line in the Jurassic Park book where a character is made suspicious by an offhand assertion (by Nedry) that he is using a <i>multi XMP system</i>.<p>Rpi4s are nice, in a sense, because you can only rarely honestly claim that the speed of the system is holding you back. Most times, presumably, it&#x27;s the efficiency of the operations you are telling it to execute.

i wonder how moore&#x27;s law figured into the pricing - for a nuclear simulation, makes sense you&#x27;d want to pay a lot, or basic science or political things like apollo moon missions, but for weather or commercial applications, if you wait a few years might not be worth to pay for cray right away, though there&#x27;s marketing aspect of how advanced your product is.. maybe this was before moores law though

The author&#x27;s CV is as interesting as the benchmarks

I wonder where a Raspberry Pi Pico - based on the RP2040 fits in all of that.

For a second there I thought there was a new sbc called cray. Well played

The article has Android phone comparisons. Any idea how the iPhones stack up against the Cray-1?

As interesting as this article is as a comparison to a 40 year old supercomputer, the reality is that computers really are artifacts of an era and their place in the progress or regress of technology is possibly valid. Today&#x27;s world&#x27;s fastest computer is a Cray:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.top500.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;frontier-remains-no-1-in-the-top500-but-aurora-with-intels-sapphire-rapids-chips-enters-with-a-half-scale-system-at-no-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.top500.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;frontier-remains-no-1-in-the-top...</a><p>So, how does the Raspberry Pi stack-up against today&#x27;s computers?

Dude fix your website certificate, come on.

&quot;In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than <i>4.5 times faster</i> than the Cray 1&quot;<p>edit: thank you for the Christmas present, yc algorithm. God bless us every one.

This is actually quite depressing considering the amount of Raspberry pi&#x27;s doing tasks like watering a plant, Reminds me of Marvin the paranoid android.

I&#x27;ve gone through the pi rabbit hole to the kubernetes&#x2F;swarm level. Just skip that stuff at this point and get a mini pc. The money comes out to be the same and I promise it is way less of a hassle.