Comparing the 1970’s Cray-1 supercomputer against the Raspberry Pi single-board computer range #RaspberryPi @hacksterio
Developer Roy Longbottom, who has been personally benchmarking computer systems large and small for more than 50 years, has published a look at how the venerable Cray-1 supercomputer stacks up against modern devices of a considerably smaller scale: the Raspberry Pi family of single-board computers (SBCs) – hackster.io.
“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,” Longbottom writes of the device, designed as the flagship product of Seymour Cray’s high-performance computing company. “The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD Card), weighs a few ounces, uses a five watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1.”
See Longbottom’s extensive tests and comparisons article here.
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And that… my dear fellow programming friends shows how incredible powerful the Cray-1 was at the time. In 1978 a computer was developed, that is ‘only’ 4.5 times slower than a PI Model B from I think 2014. That’s 36 years ago!
Cray was a true master in designing the Cray-1 computer. Even all cable lengths had to be measured precisely to ensure timings between boards here correct.
Amazing!
Not to mention an absolute fraction of the size and weight.
It just shows how far computing has come in such a short space of time.
It just goes to show that even today British computer engineers are still at the cutting edge since the Colossus was designed and built in 1944.
PS accidentally hit the post button early on the last post.
Still, the Cray maybe faster running highly specific tunned software, where this modern computers run by bloated megabytes size programs just to print ‘hello world’…in raw power I agree, but in efficient code I don’t
You can see this all around you…a windows computer from the 90 is as responsive a today’s
With 64Kbytes you could do marvels in the 80’ because the developer had to be ingenious, now if you don’t have 16GB or ram and 30 fix patches you die of old age waiting…
You recently published my details regarding performance of Raspberry Pi and Cray 1. I have just published my report on Raspberry Pi 5. This indicates that Raspberry Pi 5 can be assumed to be 194 times faster than the Cray 1 supercomputer. See PC and Pi Performance Comparisons table and previous one on vector processing. Report name is Raspberry Pi 5 Benchmarks and Stress Tests with copies in ResearchGate (PDF), Raspberry Pi Forum General and my site (HTM).
And that… my dear fellow programming friends shows how incredible powerful the Cray-1 was at the time. In 1978 a computer was developed, that is ‘only’ 4.5 times slower than a PI Model B from I think 2014. That’s 36 years ago!
Cray was a true master in designing the Cray-1 computer. Even all cable lengths had to be measured precisely to ensure timings between boards here correct.
Amazing!
Not to mention an absolute fraction of the size and weight.
It just shows how far computing has come in such a short space of time.
It just goes to show that even today British computer engineers are still at the cutting edge since the Colossus was designed and built in 1944.
PS accidentally hit the post button early on the last post.
Still, the Cray maybe faster running highly specific tunned software, where this modern computers run by bloated megabytes size programs just to print ‘hello world’…in raw power I agree, but in efficient code I don’t
You can see this all around you…a windows computer from the 90 is as responsive a today’s
With 64Kbytes you could do marvels in the 80’ because the developer had to be ingenious, now if you don’t have 16GB or ram and 30 fix patches you die of old age waiting…
You recently published my details regarding performance of Raspberry Pi and Cray 1. I have just published my report on Raspberry Pi 5. This indicates that Raspberry Pi 5 can be assumed to be 194 times faster than the Cray 1 supercomputer. See PC and Pi Performance Comparisons table and previous one on vector processing. Report name is Raspberry Pi 5 Benchmarks and Stress Tests with copies in ResearchGate (PDF), Raspberry Pi Forum General and my site (HTM).
Links
1 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377383708_Raspberry_Pi_5_Benchmarks_and_Stress_Tests
2 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=363656
3 http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/
The Cray 1 still has the better seat and that is the one bit of a Cray 1 you can’t emulate on a Pi5.