Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ The Ghost In The Machine ] on Monday 07 May 2007 19:47 \__
>
>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, chrisv
>> <chrisv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote
>> on Mon, 07 May 2007 12:07:44 -0500
>> <m5nu33p1pqo2t47oc5smjml76rppnc9icn@xxxxxxx>:
>>> Rex Ballard wrote:
>>>
>>>>The average laptop today is faster than the supercomputers of even 2
>>>>years ago
>>>
>>> LOL
>>>
>>> Sure they are, Rex. The "average" laptop, even.
>>>
>>
>> 2 decades, maybe. That would put it in the Cray-2 era
>> (1985), with 2 or 4 processors, 64 megaWords RAM minimum
>> (each word being 64 bits). Its clock speed was 4.1 ns
>> (243.9 MHz).
>>
>> A little later on is the Cray Y-MP, 1988.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
>> http://people.uwec.edu/AKGUNE/CFMIT/web/computer.html
>>
>> A basic Dell Inspiron 1501 offers 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM RAM
>> (@ 533 MHz), presumably with a 64-bit datapath, and an
>> AMD64 processor clock speed of 2.0 GHz.
>
> Maybe he meant 'super' computer, as in high-end PC. Who knows...
>
I think you all have the wrong end of the stick - I think he was referring
to some kind of power/performance or MIPs/cm² metric. In which case,
he might well be correct, as most super-computers are, in fact, clusters.
Take a peak at the top 100 supercomputers and note that 1) > 80% are
linux clusters, and 2) there is not a single Windows machine in that set
(there was one, once).
It would be interesting to look at the power-consumption curves of modern
super-computing clusters versus MIPs, and also the silicon estate against
it, too. Linux has been a major enabler in this space, for sure, but
also, the increasing availability of reasonably standardised blade-based
computing chasses (roll on ATCA, let's get to interchangeable blades).
I have a feeling that the curves might be such that Reg is not far off
in his claim, if you consider it in this way, anyway.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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