young@cs.widener.edu (Rob Young) (06/02/91)
Hello,
Did anyone catch the segment on CNBC (I think formerly FNN) on
television Saturday morning? Caught the tail-end of a story
about Intel's new Supercomputer. THE "Worlds fastest" super
computer. What speeds are we talking about as compared to
the connection machine etc? It is a 512 processor machine
, a DARPA collaboration of 12 Universities . . . Anyone have
more details?? Thanks.
--
Rob Young young@tattoo.cs.widener.edu
It is considered awkward to use seriously such words as good and evil.
But if we are to be deprived of those concepts, what will be left?
We will decline to the status of animals. -- Solzhenitsyn smsmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Smith) (06/02/91)
young@cs.widener.edu (Rob Young) writes: > Did anyone catch the segment on CNBC (I think formerly FNN) on > television Saturday morning? Caught the tail-end of a story > about Intel's new Supercomputer. THE "Worlds fastest" super > computer. What speeds are we talking about as compared to > the connection machine etc? It is a 512 processor machine > , a DARPA collaboration of 12 Universities . . . Anyone have > more details?? Thanks. There was an article in yesterday's (Saturday's) Columbus Dispatch. It showed a photo of Intel's head hardware engineer doing some last minute tinkering on it before it was to be unveiled at some meeting. I don't have the paper with me, but I do remember that the computer could do well over 8 BILLION instructions per second. That's over 1000 times as fast as my 386-33!
hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) (06/02/91)
In article <1991Jun2.153238.24866@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, smsmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Smith) writes: |> young@cs.widener.edu (Rob Young) writes: |> > Did anyone catch the segment on CNBC (I think formerly FNN) on |> > television Saturday morning? Caught the tail-end of a story |> > about Intel's new Supercomputer. THE "Worlds fastest" super |> > computer. What speeds are we talking about as compared to |> > the connection machine etc? It is a 512 processor machine |> > , a DARPA collaboration of 12 Universities . . . Anyone have |> > more details?? Thanks. |> |> There was an article in yesterday's (Saturday's) Columbus Dispatch. |> It showed a photo of Intel's head hardware engineer doing some last |> minute tinkering on it before it was to be unveiled at some meeting. |> I don't have the paper with me, but I do remember that the computer |> could do well over 8 BILLION instructions per second. That's over |> 1000 times as fast as my 386-33! 8.6 GigaFLOPS + 17 billion integer instructions per second, so it's actually more like 2000 - 3000 times faster than your 386-33. -- Kirk Hays - NRA Life. Message for Timothy Fay - "Do not eat/wear/exploit things you will not kill."
hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) (06/05/91)
In article <1382@ssdintel.isc.intel.com>, hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) writes: [about the Delta Touchstone system] |> 8.6 GigaFLOPS + 17 billion integer instructions per second, |> so it's actually more like 2000 - 3000 times faster than your 386-33. Oops - that's what I get for posting early Sunday. it's 32 GigaFlops + 17 billion integer IPS, for a total of 49 GIPS, which is > 6000 times faster than the 386-33. Of course, those are peak rates, guaranteed-not-to-exceed. -- Kirk Hays - NRA Life. Message for Timothy Fay - "Do not eat/wear/exploit things you will not kill."
izahi@leland.Stanford.EDU (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) (06/06/91)
In article <1386@ssdintel.isc.intel.com> hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) writes: >it's 32 GigaFlops + 17 billion integer IPS, for a total of 49 GIPS, which >is > 6000 times faster than the 386-33. I don't think it is fair to make such comparison. Can you mention an application that runs routinely both in the 386-33 and in the Delta? Applications that benefit from being run in supercomputers are never run in a PC (be it 386-33 or not), since the PC does not have similar memory or I/O resources. It is irrelevant to say that your LOTUS 1-2-3 spreadsheet would recalculate 3000 or 6000 times faster since it would not be noticeable beyond 10 or 20 times faster, because the spreadsheet is not big enough to even tax the abilities or the new 386-33 or 486 based PCs in any business or home application, while in engineering or the sciences serious researchers use RISC based workstations. RAUL IZAHI izahi@nova.stanford.edu
hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.185850.988@leland.Stanford.EDU>, izahi@leland.Stanford.EDU (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes: |> In article <1386@ssdintel.isc.intel.com> hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) writes: |> >it's 32 GigaFlops + 17 billion integer IPS, for a total of 49 GIPS, which |> >is > 6000 times faster than the 386-33. |> |> I don't think it is fair to make such comparison. Lighten up, Raul - I didn't make the original comparison - some person at Ohio State did. I was correcting my original incorrect correction of *his* comparison in the above message. For the record, I believe it is a somewhat silly exercise to compare PCs to supercomputers, too. On the other hand, it is interesting to see how large the span of available computational power remains. |> Can you mention an application that runs routinely both in the 386-33 and |> in the Delta? An application? Not without naming a customer, which I won't do. However, PERFECT club, SPECmarks, linpack, and many other benchmarks certainly will, which indicates that many scientific/business applications could. The ORACLE database runs on PCs, and one of our competition, nCube, is porting ORACLE to their machine, as reported in the trade press. |> Applications that benefit from being run in supercomputers are never run |> in a PC (be it 386-33 or not), since the PC does not have similar memory or |> I/O resources. This is not true - I am aware of customer codes that run on our machines, which are supercomputers, and that are also run on minicomputers, workstations, and PCs, as well. The supercomputer allows you to handle a larger problem set, perform more detailed analysis on the data, and/or do the calculations in much less time than would be required on a smaller/slower machine. This is why they exist. But their existance doesn't automatically mean that an application can *only* run on such a machine, just as the existence of Formula One race cars does not preclude the use of a Hyundai for commuting. |> It is irrelevant to say that your LOTUS 1-2-3 spreadsheet would recalculate |> 3000 or 6000 times faster since it would not be noticeable beyond 10 or 20 |> times faster, because the spreadsheet is not big enough to even tax the |> abilities or[sic] the new 386-33 or 486 based PCs in any business or home |> application, while in engineering or the sciences serious researchers use |> RISC based workstations. Nice strawman. Because you can't imagine an application that spans three or four orders of magnitude in performance requirements, it must not exist. Business applications use supercomputers routinely today, and have for at least a decade. *Serious* researchers use supercomputers, and have for at least three decades. Workstations are for software development, reading netnews, and running X and EMACS. :^) [Ever known any *goofy* researchers?] -- Kirk Hays - NRA Life. Message for Timothy Fay - "Do not eat/wear/exploit things you will not kill."
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.185850.988@leland.Stanford.EDU> izahi@leland.Stanford.EDU (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes: > Can you mention an application that runs routinely both in the 386-33 and >in the Delta? Sure. I bet csh has been ported to the Delta. They at least have a csh workalike, for sure. > Applications that benefit from being run in supercomputers are never run >in a PC (be it 386-33 or not), since the PC does not have similar memory or >I/O resources. Untrue. I know lots of guys up here who are doing serious (albeit laughable) numerical analysis on PCs, because they can't afford anything bigger. Sure they could get results a lot faster on a Touchstone Delta. They'd also be able to do much more elaborate things than they're doing. But supercomputers (even Intel's, which are a bargain) aren't cheap. > It is irrelevant to say that your LOTUS 1-2-3 spreadsheet would recalculate >3000 or 6000 times faster since it would not be noticeable beyond 10 or 20 >times faster, because the spreadsheet is not big enough to even tax the >abilities or the new 386-33 or 486 based PCs in any business or home >application, while in engineering or the sciences serious researchers use >RISC based workstations. Well, maybe they do at Stanford. But I'm here to tell you that there are a lot of serious researchers doing serious work on 386 PCs, on 286 PCs, on anything they can get their hands on. I'm editing this on a 386/25 which is the envy of everyone in an elite engineering group at one of the largest corporations in America. Hell, even this is a step up. Four years ago I was doing my engineering computing under CP/M. When Lotus gets around to porting 1-2-3 to Touchstone Delta, I for one will have a job to use it on... -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com "...and of their daughters it is written, 'Cursed be he who lies with any manner of animal.'" - Talmud
tmcconne@berger.intel.com (Tom McConnell) (06/07/91)
In article <1991Jun5.185850.988@leland.Stanford.EDU>, izahi@leland.Stanford.EDU (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes: > In article <1386@ssdintel.isc.intel.com> hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) writes: > >it's 32 GigaFlops + 17 billion integer IPS, for a total of 49 GIPS, which > >is > 6000 times faster than the 386-33. > > I don't think it is fair to make such comparison. > Can you mention an application that runs routinely both in the 386-33 and > in the Delta? > Applications that benefit from being run in supercomputers are never run > in a PC (be it 386-33 or not), since the PC does not have similar memory or > I/O resources. > It is irrelevant to say that your LOTUS 1-2-3 spreadsheet would recalculate > 3000 or 6000 times faster since it would not be noticeable beyond 10 or 20 > times faster, because the spreadsheet is not big enough to even tax the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > abilities or the new 386-33 or 486 based PCs in any business or home > application, while in engineering or the sciences serious researchers use > RISC based workstations. > RAUL IZAHI > izahi@nova.stanford.edu Raul, One of the largest uses of computers in the world is transaction processing and financial analysis, both in the business world. When doing a financial analysis, which may well be in the form of a spreadsheet, you would more than tax the abilities of most PC's. Various financial firms have invested a great deal of money in supercomputers just for financial problems. At the same time it is not uncommon for smaller financial companies, or the finance department of some corporations, to use PC's for their financial stuff. IMHO, the needs of the user always outgrow the available resources ;-). - Tom -- Tom McConnell | Internet: tmcconne@sedona.intel.com Intel, Corp. C3-21 | Phone: (602)-554-8229 5000 W. Chandler Blvd. | The opinions expressed are my own. No one in Chandler, AZ 85226 | their right mind would claim them.