(top left). The SiCortex systems are completely open source, even down to the microcode.
Another item of interest at Stanford's booth is Google's first disk array. The Lego colors were the inspiration for Google's logo. We doubt the company still uses Legos to house its storage.
A section of Fermilab's Linear Accelerator. This device is supercooled, and the electrons traveling through it are excited by a klystron. If you could see deep inside HAL 9000's all-seeing eye, this is what it would look like.
. This massively scalable, Linux-running supercomputer pays homage to HAL 9000 with a series of spherical eyes on the chassis. In fact, the whole design validates sci-fi filmmakers' predictions of the future. Missing from the new Crays are the excellent benches and arrays of blinking lights that surrounded its older models.
This is a cosmic-ray detector from Stanford. The black rectangles are scintillating (as in physics, not fashion) polymers wrapped in black electrical tape. When a gamma ray hits the scintillating material, photons are generated. These photons are then detected and converted into electrons by the photo-multiplier tubes on the ends of the detectors. The surrounding circuit boards pick up those electrons, and the corresponding LEDs then light up to indicate the direction of travel of the cosmic ray.
is a liquid cooling system that uses atomized water and a heat exchanger to cool processors without noisy fans. This entire rack was running at full load and was almost whisper quiet. Although the system is highly efficient and effective, we shudder to think of one of the hoses coming loose and raining coolant all over our fancy data center. Luckily the SprayCool system uses nonconductive coolant.
