[Beowulf] First 96-Node Transmeta Desktop Cluster Ships

[John Hearns]

On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 11:51 -0700, Jim Lux wrote:


> Lest you say, well, just use it remotely, and park it in the machine room; 
> I'd just point out that the same argument was made when PCs were 
> introduced.  Why use a PC?  We'll give you a perfectly good VT-100 or ADM3, 
> and we'll take care of the machine down the hall, and then, we can all 
> share the massively bigger processor and achieve economies of scale. 
Very well put.
Who would dream of using PROFS on a 3280 terminal these days?
Or DEC Notes on VAX systems, which I recall being vigorously used before
the WWW.


>  We've 
> even set up a very slick batch job utility and your printouts will be 
> delivered to a box down the hall within an hour.  (There is old serial 
> cabling protruding from the raceways behind my desk dating from that very 
> era, a time of Gandalf "short haul" modems and current loop interfaces).
Ahhh. Remote Job Entry (RJE) stations.
But of course, what is the Grid but RJE on steroids?
There's nothing new under the sun.
(Puts light to touchpaper, steps smartly back)

The two pence worth I'll add to this thread, and a couple of others,
is that eight processor Opteron  boxes, with dual cores, will clean up
in this sort of market. Compositing workstations for movie effects,
which used to be on SGI O2Ks, automotive design, visualization, etc.
Doesn't matter if the are noisy or heat producing - people will find
reasons to have one in the office.