
Cray Unveils Open-Source Big Data Box - kjw
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/24/cray_branches_into_analytics/
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rbanffy
Just the other day I sat on one of the Computer History Museum's Cray I's. As
much as I appreciate the fact the Cray machines come in industry-standard
racks that fit seamlessly in any data center, I miss the age of exotic shapes
and the immediately recognizable machines.

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nickpsecurity
Computers used to be way more diverse and interesting. Unfortunately, that
made using them a pain. So, industry converged on more similar things where
possible. Economics factored in given enormous investments required into new
chips. The drag of mainstream computing away from stuff like old Cray's is
like a force of nature.

Doesn't mean a niche player can't come along with a neat box with good
differentiators. Job's Next Cubes give me hope here. :)

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rbanffy
The MacPro is a great example of how you can build a PC that is not shaped
like a box.

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nickpsecurity
Lol. Yeah, there's that too. You could say they have a talent for not making
the usual, ugly stuff. ;)

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rbanffy
Even with standard rack-mountable equipment, it can't be that difficult to do
it when you have a couple hundred processor boards to arrange in space. And
the vertical piles of boxes is, most likely, not the optimal arrangement.

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nickpsecurity
That kind of thinking led to blades, Blue Gene's little cards, and later Open
Compute. So, yeah, it's probably true. ;)

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cm3
Doesn't sound like the Cray Graph Engine is available separate from the Urika-
GX package. Not that it necessarily would be useful without the Cray
programming environment, but the open source remarks are unclear and make one
wonder if they're going to release it to the public.

[http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/Cray-Urika-GX-
Produc...](http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/Cray-Urika-GX-Product-
Brief.pdf)

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akg_67
It sounds like Cray is selling their hardware with several open source big
data software installed and pre-configured and ready to go.

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cm3
That's right and there's not much info about their graph db and if it's
available to the wider public as well.

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jerven
The Urika I got to try at CSCS was probably the easiest graph database I ever
experimented with. Very single user focussed but really nicely done (single
user focus might have been CSCS as a supercomputer centre decision).

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alixaxel
Forget the box, look at PiedPipper!

