From Cray Chips “TO THE LAND OF THE TROLLS” 1986/12/11
For various reasons the route a system takes to reach its destination may be as individual as the computer’s configuration.
Hank Rosenbaum proved this on following Serial 411 to Norway. The path led by truck from Chippewa Falls to Minneapolis; by plane to Chicago and overseas to Frankfurt;
there surface travel resumed and included two ferries (16 hours) to Denmark and Sweden; and thence to Oslo. From Trondheim special telephone equipped studded-tired trucks had been dispatched to meet them. (It was icy in the mountains. Night fell at 3pm; it was not light until 9 am.)
On arrival, excited people came out in droves from the University. Hank brought back a newspaper from Trondheim with a picture of him and “superdatamaskinen” and an article on the “early Christmas present.”
—- Also
This computer arrived at NTH and SINTEF in Trondheim in November 1986. In April 1992 it was replaced with a new model.
The development of supercomputers was rapid. When this machine arrived, it was one of the fastest in the world. Compared to today’s models, it is a slow one.
The CRAY X-MP/24 was part of a national project called “Supercomputer for Norwegian research”. The project was continued with a new and faster supercomputer. This one is also located at SINTEF.
The supercomputer in Trondheim was used for a lot of heavy computing operations by Norwegian environments in everything from scientific environments such as meteorology and climate research to private companies such as the oil industry, which calculated seismic data and produced detailed seismic models and maps of possible oil and gas fields in Norwegian sea areas.
System is last seen in the Norse Teknisk MuseumÂ
