I spent a couple of years running the I/O system on the Blue Gene in that photograph (Intrepid). The pictures really don't do it justice, although all the doors are off in that photo, so that wasn't even really what it looked like. It was a big, beautiful, $100m black box.
ANL's new system, Mira has a big mural painted on it, and I think it completely ruins the aesthetic.
I don't miss working in that room, though. The box is very pretty, but the fans are astoundingly loud. As an aside, it's pretty amazing how much heat they need to dissipate. Once a year we had to do a cooling failure test where we all sat in the room by our respective subsystems while Facilities turned off the A/C just to make sure everything would notice the temperature rise and power itself off. When the A/C got cut, you felt the room start to heat up quite quickly almost instantly, within a few seconds.
Calling Mira new is a bit of a stretch (delivered in 2012?). The BlueGene/Q systems, of which Mira is, are freakishly quiet. I work in a place that used to have POWER systems with a similar cooling setup and it was the quietest machine room I have ever stepped foot in.
I did! 15 years ago I went and had custom earplugs made with replaceable attenuators, and they're still in perfect shape. Without question, it was the best $200 I've ever spent. I can't recommend them highly enough to anyone else.
ANL's new system, Mira has a big mural painted on it, and I think it completely ruins the aesthetic.
I don't miss working in that room, though. The box is very pretty, but the fans are astoundingly loud. As an aside, it's pretty amazing how much heat they need to dissipate. Once a year we had to do a cooling failure test where we all sat in the room by our respective subsystems while Facilities turned off the A/C just to make sure everything would notice the temperature rise and power itself off. When the A/C got cut, you felt the room start to heat up quite quickly almost instantly, within a few seconds.