Cray T3D
The Cray-T3D range of computers were manufactured from 1992 until 1996. The Cray-T3D marked a big change in Cray supercomputers. This was the beginning of using large numbers of commodity processors and a distributed memory. The T3D was a transition product; a processor only machine, with an attached or integrated Cray-YMP or C90. Around 40 of these machines were manufactured. Unlike previous transition customers migrating their workload from the Cray C90 to a Cray-T3D would need to account for the very different architecture of the machine. The Cray-T3D was available with multiple processor configurations of 64, 128, and 256 processors. The processors were repackaged 150 MHz DEC alpha chips.
Smaller A configurations have secondary air cooled. The modules are cooled internally as per a YMP.
The CRAY T3D SC (single cabinet) configuration provides a standalone solution by integrating up to 256 PEs with up to four CRAY Y-MP host CPUs in a single cabinet.
The CRAY T3D MCA (multiple-cabinet, air-cooled) system offers existing CRAY Y-MP or CRAY C90 system customers all the benefits of the CRAY T3D architecture in a configuration that can be air or water-cooled and scales down to only 32 processing elements.
CRAY Y-MP or CRAY C90 customers can enhance their computer capabilities by integrating a CRAY T3D MC (multiple cabinet) system with existing Cray Research systems. The CRAY T3D MC is available in a wide range of sizes from 128 to 2048 processing elements with peak performance scaling from 19.2 to 307.2 GF LOPS. Total system memory sizes range from 2 to 128 Gbytes.
Parallel Computing Applications and Environment on the T3D
T3D_IO_93_94 – Cray T3D experiments with I/O
Youtube Video: The CRAY T3D Massively Parallel Processing System, lecture by Stephen Nelson and Steven Oberlin
Paper behind paywall at IEEE
Cray T3D: a new dimension for Cray Research
Sales brochures :
Technical Manuals specific to this machine:
- HR-04033_CRAY_T3D_System_Architecture_Overview_Sep93
- SR-2199_3.0.1 T3D and T3E Cray porgramming environment differences
- CMM-0602-0A0 Cray T3D Hardware Reference Manual Volume 1 of 2
- CMM-0602-0A0 Cray T3D Hardware Reference Manual Volume 2 of 2
- HMM-088-0 Cray T3D PE Configurations Overview
- HMM-089-0 Cray T3D MC Systems PE Configurations (SN 6001-6015)
- HR-04058 Cray T3D Multiple Cabinet System Overview
- HR-04059 Cray T3D Single Cabinet System Overview
- HR-04068 Cray T3D Multiple-cabinet Air-cooled Mainframe
T3D Chip pic
This close up of a T3D module shows couple of interesting aspects.
- The large brown alpha chip is branded with Dec and CRI wording.
- The processor has been “flipped” so that that heat exits the package downwards onto the cooling plate. Normal Alpha chips would have the heat sink on top.
- Memory daughter cards are visible to the left.