kilian@poplar.cray.com (Alan Kilian) (03/24/91)
In article <18646@milton.u.washington.edu>, frerichs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David J F rerichs) writes: > ... Talk about the Connection Machine ... > Compared to the CRAY, which would cease to run if it weren't > cooled with cryogenic fluid and kept in a perfect, near clean- > room environment, the CM2 is an iron-man. > [dfRERICHS > frerichs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu _/_\__/_\__/_\_ > frerichs@well.sf.ca.us \_/ \_/ \_/ ] I thought that this was just a little too harsh on Cray Research, Inc. and I think I'll insert a few facts here (read "blatant advertising material"): -- Cray Research has never built a cryogenically cooled computer. You are thinking of the now defunct Control Data subsidiary ETA and the ETA-10 Cray now has two (count 'em two) supercomputer models which are AIR cooled. That's regular computer room air. These two models also use regular computer room power (and lot's of it to boot). No special motor/generators required. These and all Cray machines do not require anything special of the computer room (like a "clean room" or anything). In fact the Cray-2 is completely enclosed. You could pour concrete dust and honey on it if you liked and it would still run just fine. Try that with the CM2 and "Iron-man" is not likely to be the first word out of your mouth. And you get up to 2 100 MegaBYTE per second channels, many, many, many 12.5 MegaBYTE per second disk drive channels (which can run simultaneously). Hey, how about 4294967000 Bytes of MAIN memory? (Yep that's 4.2 _billion._) Oh how about 8 CPUs capable of 2.2 Gigaflops? (That's 2.2G for all 8, not for each processor; and this is a demonstrated number for a real science application, not a matrix multiply loop) As an added bonus you get real live UNIX. And those pesky "ps" commands run on a real supercomputer cpu, not a teensy weensy processor. (Anyone tried multitasking ps over 65000 cpu's yet?) You want to try virtual reality with REALLY complicated worlds and tons of I/O? How about demonstrated TCP/IP performance, Cray to Cray, of over 300 Megabits per second! What? 300 Megabits with TCP/IP? No way!! Yep. We do it every day. We've got the machines for you. Call now. Operators are standing by. Call 1-800-HolyCow to order NOW NOW NOW!!! -Alan Kilian kilian@cray.com 612.683.5499 Cray Research, Inc. | If you were plowing a field what would you 655 F Lone Oak Drive | rather use? 2 strong oxen or 1024 chickens? Eagan MN, 55121 | -Seymour Cray (on massively parallel machines) [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Shameless and brazen. :-} ]