Kendall Square Research 2 (KSR2) Supercomputer CPU chips

[keyman]

Back in 2011, I posted the topic Kendall Square Research 1 (KSR1) Supercomputer CPU chips, which was for KSR1 CPU chips. At that time, I thought the KSR2 chips I'm posting about now had been lost or destroyed. However, as part of moving from one city to another, I spent a lot of time going through all of my old records and boxes. I was surprised to find a box containing the KSR2 chips, which are pictured below.

Background (much of this section is duplicated from the my old post, which I linked above, with modifications to focus on the KSR2 chips):
In 1995, I purchased a bunch of material from Kendall Square Research when they went out of business. Part of that material was their stock of custom CPU chips for their KSR1 and KSR2 massively parallel supercomputers.

They used 4 different chips to implement the 64 bit CPUs. These chips were: the Cell Execution Unit, the Floating Point Unit, the Arithmetic Logic Unit, and the External I/O unit (XIO). There were two additional chips which handled system and bus interfaces. Thus, there was a set of 6 chips which made up the primary logic for their CPU boards. More information on the company and the systems can be found on Wikipedia. The picture of the KSR1 CPU board in the Wikipedia article shows the use of the 6 part numbers for the KSR1 custom chips on the board. Unfortunately, I don't know of a picture of an identifiable KSR2 CPU board.

These KSR2 chips have been sitting in storage for the last 25 years. Now that I've found them again, it's way past the time I look at getting them into the hands of people interested in collecting them, rather than just sitting in my storage in a sealed box.

These chips:
The CPU dies were packaged using Tape Automated Bonding (TAB), which results in a very thin and lightweight chip. TAB has the chip mounted directly to the lead-frame with the lead-frame expected to be directly soldered to the PCB. It's also possible to put them in sockets on the PCB, but the pins are very small and easily bent. The KSR2 chips are physically larger than the KSR1 chips (you can see a picture showing the size of both in the KSR1 thread I linked above). Instead of the pins/lead-frame being plated with gold, like the KSR1 chips, the KSR2 chips are plated by a silver metal. I don't actually know what metal was used, but palladium appears to have been common at the time and matches how shiny the coating remains after 25 years.

I've gone through the chips and done a first-pass sort on them. The sets I expect to sell here are in good cosmetic condition. The ones included in the purchase button in this message are for the most recent versions. There are also a small number with unusual markings or which are earlier revisions, but those aren't included in the listed sets of 6 chips. If people are interested in the earlier revisions of the chips, I can put together groupings of them.

The part numbers for these chips were laser-scribed onto them, which is the normal way chips are marked. I mention it because the KSR1 chips were marked with paper labels. There are several different part numbers.
The six primary chips, with the most recent revisions are:
3-238-02
3-239-01
3-240-01F
3-241-02F
3-242-00
3-243-03

In the pictures attached below you will find examples of what the chips look like (Unfortunately, there are some artifacts which are dust in my flatbed scanner).

What I'm selling:
I'm selling sets of 6 KSR2 chips, in good cosmetic condition, with the part numbers listed above and in the pictures below.

I assume that people will want something showing the providence for the chips. I'd like to be able to provide a copy of the receipt I received when I purchased the equipment from KSR, but I've checked all of my records, and just don't have the receipt any longer. So, the best thing I've come up with is to give you a a statement from me, signed under penalty of perjury, as to the history of the chips from the time I purchased them until now.

From the conversation in the 2011 thread, the prices which people stated they would expect to pay for those chips ranged from $30 to $75. I don't know if prices have changed much in the last eight years. At that time, I offered those chips for $42/set. Inflation over the last eight years would put the equivalent price at $48, so that's what I'll offer these for. I'd probably get more if I put them on eBay, but I'd rather sell directly to people here.

Shipping:
For US domestic shipments, I ship via USPS Priority mail which provides a record of the shipment. The cost is $8 for shipping via USPS Priority.

For international shipments, I usually ship things via various USPS options, as they tend to provide good results, while not being too expensive.

CPUShack: Based on my experience here on CPU World in 2011, several people wanted me to ship their purchases to CPUShack, who then re-shipped the chips to the individual purchaser. If you want to have me ship to CPUShack, you can select "Pickup" as the shipping option, for a cost of $0 (i.e. if CPUShack is still doing consolidated shipments, then I'll pay for the shipping to them).

I'm happy to use other shipping methods. PayPal's shipping options and interface isn't that great. PayPal doesn't automatically check with any carrier for their actual rates, so it's a significant amount of work to set up lots of shipping options in advance by hand. Given the amount of work required, I've only looked up the price for and defined a few different types. If you want something that's not listed there, please contact me.

Payment
I'd prefer to be paid via PayPal, which provides some security for both you and I. If you're interested, you can buy a set through PayPal (with, or without a PayPal account) by clicking on the following button and going through the checkout process:


If you'd like me to acknowledge your order here on CPU World, then I'm going to need enough information to match your order to your CPU World ID. The easiest thing to match is your email address, but the other information which is included in your PayPal order is your name and address. You can send me a PM with any of that information, which will allow me to match up CPU World ID to your order. Alternately, you can post enough identifying information in this thread, but I assume that a PM is better for privacy reasons. If you want that confirmation, and what info you supply, and how to supply it, is up to you.

[isa-d]

The paiment mxxxx@rxxxxxxx.it it's mine, isa-d
to CPUShack, thanks

[CPUShack]

[keyman]

[aberco]

So to sum up you get 6 different KSR2 chips for $48 is that correct?

[keyman]

[pixelmanca]

I just purchased a set through PayPal from the email address of: pixelmanca@hotmail.com and my user name here is obviously pixelmanca.

There was no place to put my CPU World user name in the purchase area on PayPal. Please ship them to John at CPUShack. Thanks a lot.

[pixelmanca]

Do you have any left that look like these?

[isa-d]

Any news abot these sets?

[keyman]

I'm sorry for the delay in me getting back to this. I, unfortunately, had to go out of town in response to some medical issues with my father. Admittedly, I then spent late yesterday and part of today decompressing.

[keyman]

[keyman]

[keyman]

Note: This individual post is about KSR1 CPU chips, which are covered in the Kendall Square Research 1 (KSR1) Supercomputer CPU chips thread. The image in this post doesn't represent the KSR2 CPU chips being sold through the PayPal button included in the first post in this current thread.

[pixelmanca]

I just found out that a friend of mine bought 70 of the KSR1 chips from you for $140 on ebay, so I'll just get some of that model of chips from him...

Please just ship the set of KSR2 chips to AVICC whenever you are ready, no big rush for me, thanks.

[keyman]