[rescue] cray sx-6

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 04:26:49PM -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 09:52:19AM -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> > > Specially when there is only 1 American vector company vs 3 Japanese
> > > vector manufacturers..... :-)
> > 
> > Who are the other Japanese vector makers?  Also, any japanese machines ala
> > the MTA2?
> 
> You have Fujitsu (VPP/VPX), and Hitachi (SR). And then a bunch of
> universities doing a lot of application specific supercomputing (ala
> GRAPE).

Hmm.  I knew fujitsu did super computers, but I thought they were just
maspar/numa/ssi/WhateverTheCurrentPhrase machines.  Learn something new
every day.  I wish I could get one of their highend SPARC systems.  Those
would be so cool.

> The short question to the MTA2, would you do a sequel to a movie that was
> a flop? :-) It is a great idea in paper, but they seem to get no where.
> Although I think we need companies like TERA that try new approaches,
> certainly it will never be as exciting as the mid/late 80s in the area of
> computer architecture.... but....

I love the idea of MTA style machines.  I really, really wish I could get
a CM2, but it probably will never happen.  Maybe it will someday be
feasible to build my own.

> One funny thing is that most of the new machines are CMOS, and I have a
> ton of old papers in my drawer that claimed that CMOS was dead, and why
> more research was needed on GaAs, ECL, opto computing, etc.... I guess
> this goes in line with all those people who said that Unix was dead, that
> NT was the future, or that the mainframe was dead and NT could do the same
> on cheaper infraestructure. So maybe, just maybe this means that Microsoft
> will go the way of the GaAs, I can only dream.... can I? :-)

One can only dream that NT will go the way of GaAs.  I really wish that
there were more unique things hardware wise.  I find it sad that it is
nearly all dead now that I finally am able to figure out how to code for
things like em (not that I would currently be very good at coding for
them).  Seems like the most interesting new things seem to come in video
game boxes like the PS2.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd