Ten years ago today the first batch of SpiNNaker chips arrived back from packaging and we got the first chance to test and try them out. Remarkably the tens of years of person effort that went into their development came to fruition, and a number of bottles of champagne were opened, and contents consumed. The original SpiNNaker team are now to be found all around the world, many still in Manchester, and the team has been augmented by many others during the journey to the 1 million core machine and beyond, plus being part of the Human Brain Project. It was a really special time for so many of us, so I thought I’d share some photos of that day. Steve FurberThe University of Manchester
The Package of Packages Arrives (pictured, Francesco, SteveT, Luis and Dave)Always cut away from the body – the rush to find out if we have a successful tape-out…Would you like mayonnaise with these?Socket on the Test board is waiting to receive the first chip for testingWireshark capture of the chip announcing itself to the world across its Ethernet portInitial testing complete – Prof. Steve Furber cracking out the bubbles to JimSteve giving a speech to the lab (yes he is holding some mole grips – we had some trouble with the cork of a vintage bottle Dave had ready for the day, so Engineering was applied!)Steve describing that he’d actually wanted a die size ‘this big’Tom adds another ceiling indentation with the cork of another bottle of bubbly, scaring people witlessSergio, Alex, Francesco and Martin admiring the new topology of the ceilingIt wasn’t the only reason for celebration that day, Dom passed his PhD vivaSome of the bottles opened in celebration, non-drinkers were catered for tooSurveying the empties more artfully at the end of the day of celebrationThe GDSII plot of the SpiNNaker die, which is inside the chip. It’s labelled with the main components (plot source: IMEC, annotated locally)
