The Museo de Historia de la Computación has presented a working, full-scale Cray-1 replica in Majadas de Tiétar, Spain, on September 26, 2026. Its classic C-shaped exterior surrounds a distributed cluster of 30 Mac mini (2012) computers that supplies the computing.
Thirty Mac minis form the cluster
The 30 computers operate as 30 nodes with 64 processing cores in total. In a distributed cluster, separate computers work together on computing tasks. The Mac minis run UNIX, and the project attributes a combined capacity of 1.5 teraFLOPS to the cluster. A teraFLOPS measures a trillion floating-point operations per second.
A full-scale Cray-1 form, finished in Extremadura’s colors
Designed by Seymour Cray and presented in 1976, the original Cray-1 is known for its C-shaped layout. The museum’s replica recreates that exterior at full scale; its computing comes from the Mac mini cluster. The enclosure is finished in green, white, and black, the colors of Extremadura’s flag.
The replica’s cooling design uses convection: heat dissipates from the bottom upward through aluminum supports and a metal chassis. The project took more than a year and a half to build.
The control station and other museum systems
A vintage-style control station with three screens can also control two original Cray CX1 systems from 2004 in the museum’s collection. A Raspberry Pi running an emulator for older systems is another part of the installation, separate from the Mac mini cluster.
A remote presentation from the museum was scheduled for October 3, 2026, at a conference in Turin organized by the Museo Piemontese di Informatica. Carlos Izquierdo, director of the Museo de Historia de la Computación, was announced as the speaker.
