The Jim Austin Computer Collection

The Cray T3E AC


    The machine at the Met Office

The Cray 3TE was used by the UK metrological office until the end of 2002. It was bought for doing the year 2000 software tests. The AC denotes that its an air cooled system.

The machine has the following specification:

28 Processor elements

256Mb per processor, with 512Mb on 4 processors.

Total memory size 5Gb

Disk storage size 72Gb

peak performance 600Mflops per processor, 16.8Gflops total for this machine (28 processors).

Size: Height 1836mm, Width 728mm, Length 1525mm

Details of the machine can be found at met office web site, the machine is the test machine listed at the end of the page:

http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/nwp/numerical/computers/t3e.html

Some pictures of the system

 

The machine in the machine room in the met office. The cabinet on the left is the disk unit. The Sun console for the machine is on the table to the left.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

This is a picture of one processor card from the machine. Four processor modules can be seen. The back of this is covered in cooling fins. This is very heavy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This is a close up of the processor card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a picture of the interconnect between the cards. The system has no backplane, just a set of individual interconnect cables. The processors can be seen at the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 This is a picture of me undoing the two cabinets, unwiring the processors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we have the machine in the van (after some hours of effort). I am on the right, Kevin is on the left.