bills@cca.UUCP (Bill Stackhouse) (11/05/86)
Imagine looking at the Finder's desktop, the disk icons are replaced with icons that look like computers, Mac, DEC, IBM (big) IBM PC, and a CRAY. When you click on one of these icons a window opens and you see something that looks like the "view by name" Finder window but of the files that you own on that computer. To copy a file(s) from one computer to another, just drag the file around as you do today. To start a program on any machine, just double click on its name in the window for that computer. Sounds like a dream, well it is not. Yesterday I went to a lecture at MIT by Dr. Larry Smarr, Director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, Illinois. Smarr lecture, titled "Hide the Cray" talked about projects like this that are aimed at allowing researchers to have easy access to the Cray(s) at the center from IBM PC, Macs, Suns, and other workstations. They already allow you to define disks on a PC that represent other machines and are now working on the MAC. Currently a researcher can use Versaterm to move data generated on the Cray to the Mac and copy/paste it in Mac applications such as Cricket Graph and MS Word. They also have some great color applications for the PC. Sounds like all you need is a NSF grant that includes supper computer time and you will have access to this software. I asked if there was any chance this will be distributed and he said that when they had the resources to support that, they would. That means that even if you don't have or need a Cray, that you will be able to move/execute things on your IBM 3090 or VAX/UNIX from your Mac someday. (I should note that this is a joint effort with all the vendors, Apple, IBM, Sun, Dec, ... to do this). Really great stuff. You should have seen the color graphics of flying through the Grand Canyon with all the images generated by the Cray. Or how about a simulation of an instantaneous crush of a metal bar and watch a crack form along with the vibrations of the metal surrounding the crack. Bill Stackhouse bills@cca.cca.com