paul@uwvax.ARPA (Paul Haeberli) (08/13/83)
from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory "Weekly Bulliten" June 1, 1983: People in the S-1 computer project say they'll soon demonstrate how to build a computer with more power than the Cray, but at about one-tenth the cost. More astonishing, they claim a revolutionary technique developed here and unveiled last month at a scientific meeting in Baltimore will allow them to build such a custom-designed supercomputer overnight. Assistant Energy Secretary Herman Roser, DOE's top nuclear weapons official, heard about the plan in a briefing here last week. Making the case for the project was S-1 leader Tom McWilliams. The S-1 people, who work in O-Group, have been doing research on the supercomputer of the future since 1975. They have built a couple of machines that are now running test programs, but those machines are nearly as large as the standard refrigerator. The group now has its sights set on a new machine, which they call the Mark IIB. The new machine will cost about $250,000 - compared with about $10 million for the Cray supercomputer. But the Mark IIB will do more than the Cray, McWilliams told Roser. It will have twice the Cray's vaunted speed. The Mark IIB will have 1,000 times the Cray's main memory and because of that will have much faster interaction with users, McWilliams said. A new LLNL technique for designing computer microchips - called laser pantography - is expected to sharply increase the speed with which the group is able to come up with new generation supermachines. "We see a doubling of chip capacity and a halving in costs every year," said Associate Director Carl Haussmann, who accompanied Roser to the S-1 shop. "So a technology that can cut the time to the next generation by four years and still give you the same advance in technology is truly sensational."