🚀 go-pugleaf

Pete Wilson (pwi...@dial.pipex.com) wrote:
: Andy wrote:
: > 
: > On Fri, 06 Jun 1997 11:22:03 -0700, Levi Cochran
: > <levi.c...@Ebay.sun.com> wrote:
: > 
: > > I read about this computer in the paper.
: > > Isn't the first computer to do a trillion calculations a sec.
: > > I think it had 200+ PPros in parallel.
: > >
: > > All of this could have actually been a dream I had, but I think it's
: > > pretty close to being correct.
: > 
: > 200+ PPros in parallel would not make the fastest computer.  Cray
: > makes supercomputers using 512 500MHz Alphas in parallel.  To make an
: > Intel-based machine as powerful as this, you'd need to parallel 2048
: > PPros (large-scale parallelling is done in powers of 2).  This begs
: > the question: why?  The Alpha solution would be more efficient and
: > less expensive to implement.
	That is completely true, 200 PPro's is not a lot of PPro's relative
to a high-end SGI/Cray supercomputer.  However, the world's fastest computer
is a supercomputer at Sandia National Labs (I believe they are still an 
afilliate of Lockheed Martin) built around 9,200 PPro 200 CPU's.  It's capable
of 1.4 teraflops, and has yet to be matched by ANYTHING.  I doubt that 
that will remain the case for long, but today that's the winner.  It's also
the only one of its kind that I know of.
	According to rumour, it can boot Windows 95 in under a minute... ;)

	-Rakesh