[Beowulf] HPC Market Question

[Mark Hahn]

> normally according to moores law new technology is released every 18 months.

no: it observes that _transistor_count_ (at efficient cost)
doubles every _2_years_.  the wikipedia page is very good.
however, ML largely ignores the fact the various measures 
that display exponential improvement are areal processes,
which actually move in jumps.  and not all the jumps are or 
have been as easy.

> right now there are the i7's which have just been released.

i7 is a pretty big discontinuity in intel's design.  it'll be interesting
to see how smoothly they make it.  but don't the first i7's actually
have _lower_ transistor count than current core2's?