Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bbn!bbn.com!emiller
From: emiller@bbn.com (ethan miller)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cray architecture
Message-ID: <22763@bbn.COM>
Date: 29 Mar 88 18:22:22 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <418@ole.UUCP> <3216@phri.UUCP> <1574@osiris.UUCP> <1461@ut-emx.UUCP> <18616@think.UUCP>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: emiller@bbn.com (ethan miller)
Organization: BBN Labs (Cambridge, MA)
Lines: 33

In article <18616@think.UUCP> barmar@fafnir.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
=>
=>You'd appreciate the Connection Machine's exterior design, then.  The
=>entire face (about a 5x5-foot square) is an array of LEDs (2 faces
=>with 64 rows of 32 lights on a fully-configured machine).  It would be
=>nice if they weren't all the same color, but I think I've heard that
=>only red LEDs are inexpensive enough to put 4K of them on a machine.
=>The lights can either be controlled explicitly by a program, or they
=>can show the state of a set of processors.
=>
=>Barry Margolin
=>Thinking Machines Corp.
=>
=>barmar@think.com
=>uunet!think!barmar

No, green and yellow LEDs aren't that expensive.  You can buy them at
Radio Shack (quantity 1) for around $.50 each--about the same as for red LEDs.
The total cost would be about $2000, probably less due to quantity discounts.
That is not that much relative to the cost of a Connection Machine.
The reason they are all the same color is probably that the additional
colors would not add information and, instead, would confuse the engineers.

ethan
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Ethan Miller
BBN Laboratories (Cambridge, MA)
ARPAnet: emiller@bbn.com
Disclaimer: Don't blame BBN for what I write.

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should
 on no account be allowed to do the job."
	-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy