[Beowulf] Re: vectors vs. loops

[Douglas Eadline - ClusterWorld Magazine]

Phil

I find your statements and conclusions so out of context that I cannot
respond in a meaningful way.

-Doug

On Wed, 4 May 2005, Philippe Blaise wrote:

> Douglas Eadline - ClusterWorld Magazine wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, 3 May 2005, Philippe Blaise wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>Robert G. Brown wrote:
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >>>....
> >>>
> >>>Still, the marketplace speaks for itself.  It doesn't argue, and isn't
> >>>legendary, it just is.
> >>>....
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>But, does the hpc marketplace have a direction ?
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Just as any market place it is ruled by price/performance. One could argue 
> >that during the "vector machine" epoch there was an artificial market that 
> >was due to the cold war. Performance at any price was an important 
> >strategic issue.
> >
> >  
> >
> You really think, that even today, the market place is ruled by price / 
> performance ratio ?
> So why don't we use millions of slow and cheap cpus ?
> With this kind of argument we must stop the research programs, and try 
> to transform all the
> scientific codes for embarrisingly parallel computing !
> 
> More seriously, the market place seems mostly governed by big US 
> companies and
> financial directors.
> Moreover, remember that some years ago NEC and Fujitsu supercomputers 
> have been
> taxed by the US government. (and that was not during the cold war !).
> See for example
> http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/articles/cd-supercomputer.html
> 
> Today everyone should be happy to see that some companies like Cray
> are trying to do better than HP or IBM in the linux cluster area, event 
> it if it's not
> the Cray of yesterday as you said.
> I think that this is partially due to the "NEC earth simulator effect", 
> and that linux clusters
> performances and functionalities are not fantastic for parallel jobs 
> compare to a good old T3E.
> 
> The price/perf ratio is too simplistic.
> The marketplace at a given instant means nothing.
> 
> 
> Phil.
> 

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