Falling into the “because he can!” category, Chris Mention create a 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1!
In late 70s, the Cray-1 was the world best super computer (and most expensive at $7 million). It amazing he can emulate that with a FPGA.
Personal story: This was the most famous of the first generation SuperComputers. The Intelligence community purchased most of them, with a few going to academic & military use. Apple even purchased one to run chip simulations. A friend in Chicago had one of the best stories regarding the Cray-1. He was an astronomer at the University of Chicago, and his simulation of star clusters made him one of the leading Cray users in the world. When his University received their new machine, they called him up to test it out. He ran over to the engineering building, with his Mac 512 under his arm. He plugged the Mac into the serial outlet of the Cray, and downloaded his programs into the supercomputer using MacTerminal (there was no other terminal program at that time). As his Mac sent further commands to the Cray, he realized his now had the world most expensive, multi-million dollar Apple Peripheral. He gave me a photo of him, his Mac, sitting new to the Cray. I kept it on my wall for years.
https://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/
Wiki on Cray-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1
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