[geeks] Massively parallel... cheap?

[Keith Campbell]

> Hi folks,
>
> I am in need of some recommendations. I have a project in mind that
will
> require a machine (or cluster) with some pretty beefy capabilities:
>
> * 64+ processors (the more, the better!)
> * Several gigabytes of memory -- this is basically a big disk cache
> * ability to address 1TB+ of disk
>
> The computation this system will be performing is most likely going to
be
> simple integer math and comparisons-- *maybe* floating point but I
doubt it.
> The working data set will be *huge*, several gigabytes in size, with
> somewhere between 10000 and 100000+ data points being computed at any
given
> 'time'. Think about a talk similar to simulating the movement of a
million
> stars and that's pretty much what I'm up against, which is why it has
to
> execute as many operations in parallel as possible. If someone has
something
> brilliant to say here, I'd sure love to hear it.

wrong way to specify your requirements.

The 2 most important things to state:
1) how much money are you willing to spend
2) when do you want the work completed

next come details of the data:
3) is each data point isolated, or does it rely on other data points, if
it relies on others, can they be localized to a few or limited number,
or do you have to process the entire set at once.  This will determine
what kind/speed of communication is required between
processes/processors.