A Cray-1 supercomputer replica from 30 obsolete Mac Minis

The Museo de Historia de la Computación in Spain has unveiled a 1:1 scale replica of the iconic 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer. To power the tribute, the museum utilized 30 obsolete Mac Minis, mostly dating back to 2012. By networking these machines, the team created a parallel cluster capable of 1.3 teraflops of performance, significantly outpacing the original machine's 160 megaflops. The project, which took 18 months to complete, serves as a 50th-anniversary celebration of both the Cray-1 and Apple. While the original supercomputer relied on specialized vector processing, this modern replica demonstrates the evolution of computing by distributing tasks across 64 active processor cores. The installation provides museum visitors with a tangible look at how consumer hardware has evolved to surpass the capabilities of historical research machines, highlighting the massive shifts in computer architecture over the last five decades.