
The largest computer ever built - mef
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/the-largest-computer-ever-built/
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jessriedel
> What are the manageable pieces needed to make quantum computing or deriving
> all electrical power from the sun a reality? I don?t know, and I don?t know
> of anybody else who does: therefore, such things do not count as legitimate
> long term projects.

Boy, that wording rubs me the wrong way. This stuff is known as "research".
Yes, that makes it highly uncertain. No, that does not make it an illegitimate
project.

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drcube
Yeah, they're legitimate "research" projects, not "engineering" projects. No
usable device is expected to be produced and put into service at the end.
People funding that research are buying knowledge, not useful systems.

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azov
If you're in Bay Area, it (well, some pieces of it) is on display in Computer
History Museum -
[http://www.computerhistory.org/VirtualVisibleStorage/artifac...](http://www.computerhistory.org/VirtualVisibleStorage/artifact_frame.php?tax_id=02.02.02.00)

~~~
smutticus
This web design is terrible. I expect better from the Computer History Museum.

I tried Chrome, Safari and Firefox on OS X and it looks terrible in all of
them.

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awjr
Really? I went there, was able to clearly see a well written article, not
cluttered with anything distracting that gave me the information I needed,
allowing me to focus 100% on the content.

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dmd
He's referring to the Computer History Museum link in the parent, not the SAGE
article.

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chiph
"Core Memory" .. that brings back a memory. I worked on an unrelated system
while in the USAF that had 512 bytes of core memory. We had a problem where
the data was getting corrupted some of the time, particularly on a message
indicator byte that disrupted flow control. After a day of oscilloscope work,
it turned out that one core in the array had gone bad, and it just happened to
be in the "wrong" place.

The system had been designed in the mid 1960's, and this particular core array
had been running since 1970 or so, and this was 1985. So 14 or so years of
continuous uptime. There's something to be said about building hardware at the
macro size, not the micro size. ;)

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sixothree
3-112-0_Theory_Of_Programming_Apr59.pdf is quite interesting.

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alan_cx
If long term projects can be made obsolete by their deployment time, then on
what basis can long term project actually happen. What ever you do, it's a
gamble.

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rbanffy
This is why "release early, release often" was invented.

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rachelbythebay
"Our grandfathers knew about fault tolerance"

Just our grandfathers, and not our grandparents as a whole?

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Domenic_S
"Grandfather" also means 'ancestor'.

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grandfather>

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vacri
Your own 'ancestor' link is a referal to the definition of father of parent.
It's not gender neutral.

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f4stjack
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

