custom hw vs cots

Tue Aug 23 21:39:33 PDT 2005

> I remember when 1U chassis' became the thing in the beowulf world,
> and all of a sudden power, heat, and floor requirements mattered (it
> was rather fun to throw 38 45lb 1Us into a 42U chassis that had 50lbs
> of other gear, and weighed 75lbs, box it up into a crate, and try to safely
> put that into a truck backed-up to a non-functioning loading dock, then
> hope it wouldn't fall through our customer's floors)

That which is old is new again.  :-)  Cray Research used to slide things
(like a Cray-1) across raised floors on very large, quite thick aluminum
plates, to spread the load.

Not to mention heat dissipation.  Next time you're in Chippewa Falls,
Wisconsin, be sure to check out the CFMIT (www.cfmit.org), what's left of the
Cray corporate museum.  I made my pilgrimage recently.  It's amazing how much
of this stuff is practically a lost art (hiding in plain sight in museums),
and seems to be reinvented over and over and over.