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Thursday, July 31, 2014

"The Red Skies" of 1883

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"It is impossible not to conjecture a connection with the volcanic eruption in the Sunda Straits, by which, on Aug. 26, the island of ...
Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Silicon to Supercomputer

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The J90 logic is implemented using application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips fabricated by IBM. There are 10 unique ASICs that ar...
Saturday, July 26, 2014

The summit station at El Misti, Peru (19,200 feet)

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"The night is passed at the hut, and the final ascent to the summit made on the second morning. This occupies several hours, as the an...
Thursday, July 24, 2014

Geared to the Stars

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The telescope at Ladd Observatory uses a clock drive to compensate for the Earth's rotation and track the stars. Modern telescopes use ...
Monday, July 21, 2014

Power Up

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The Cray J916 was featured at our monthly open house this past Saturday. We spent most of the day talking to visitors about the system and s...
Sunday, July 20, 2014

The Dawn of a New Era

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When I was a young child I would watch reruns of the original Star Trek. It wasn't so much the space ships or aliens that impressed me. ...
Saturday, July 19, 2014

Prismatic Analysis

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One of the projects that I've been working on is the Brashear astronomical spectroscope from 1891. We're trying to recreate the abi...
Thursday, July 17, 2014

Jedi vs. the Droids

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How does the performance of a 20 year old supercomputer compare to the devices that we use today? Let's compare the Cray J916 to a recen...
Tuesday, July 15, 2014

bootp

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We are at the point where we can power up the Cray and begin configuring it. Next we need to work on the J90 System Console (or SWS, the Ser...
Monday, July 14, 2014

This is Arecibo Calling...

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"Ironically, the globular cluster at which the signal was aimed won't be there when the message arrives. It will have moved well ...