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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:06 ADT
Mok-Kong Shen (mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de)
Fri, 03 Jul 1998 18:29:23 +0100
Robert Hettinga wrote:
> >
> > Los Alamos mail-order supercomputer among world's fastest
> >
> > LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 18, 1998 - A supercomputer built from ordinary
> >personal computer components is among the 500 fastest computers in the
> >world, an international survey reported today.
> >
> > The Avalon computer cost just $150,000 to build, and can compute more
> >than 20 billion mathematical operations in a second, said Michael Warren
> >of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical Astrophysics Group.
> >
> > Avalon made the 315th spot on the 11th TOP500 list released at the
> >Supercomputer '98 conference in Mannheim, Germany. The list is the
> >best-known ranking of supercomputer performance.
> >
> > "It's now possible for a small group of motivated people to design and
> >build their own parallel supercomputer using off-the-shelf computer parts
> >and easily available software," Warren said. "Only a handful of companies
> >in the world produce a computer this fast, and the least expensive costs
> >well over a million dollars."
The belief in sort of unconditional need of supercomputers stems
in my opinion from (1) lobbying by manufacturers (2) prestige
gain of owning very expensive super-modern equipments (national
centres, etc.) and (3) personal perspectives of persons working
at supercomputing centres. Back at the time where 8086 processors
were common for PCs, I used a benchmark program to show that
the computing power of one of the then modern CYBER computers
was equivalent to only about 100 PCs. But no one in my environment
wanted to 'know' that result.
M. K. Shen
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:06 ADT