| |
Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer
by Rattle at 6:24 am EDT, Oct 14, 2003 |
] An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards,
] each containing four of the chips, would perform at
] about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop). ] At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one
] of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. ] "At 3 watts, you could put it in a PCMCIA card," said
] McIntosh-Smith. "With two chips on a PC Card, you can
] have 50 gigaflops on a laptop, running off a battery.
] That's equivalent to a small Linux cluster on your
] notebook." Its the FPU from hell! |
| |
RE: Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer
by k at 10:53 am EDT, Oct 14, 2003 |
Rattle wrote:
] ] An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards,
] ] each containing four of the chips, would perform at
] ] about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop).
]
] ] At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one
] ] of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.
]
] ] "At 3 watts, you could put it in a PCMCIA card," said
] ] McIntosh-Smith. "With two chips on a PC Card, you can
] ] have 50 gigaflops on a laptop, running off a battery.
] ] That's equivalent to a small Linux cluster on your
] ] notebook."
]
] Its the FPU from hell! cool tech. useless for most, but the more computation we can get out of a watt, the better, I say. [one note though -- the wired author said the earth simulator was 10 TFlop, but he's off by about 3.5 x. From their webpage, the sustained performance of the Earth Simulator is 35.86 Tflop, with a peak of 40. Top500 confirms : http://www.top500.org/list/2003/06/?page ] |
|
| | |
RE: Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer
by lclough at 2:35 pm EDT, Oct 14, 2003 |
inignoct wrote:
] Rattle wrote:
] ] ] An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards,
] ] ] each containing four of the chips, would perform at
] ] ] about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop).
] ]
] ] ] At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one
] ] ] of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.
] ]
] ] ] "At 3 watts, you could put it in a PCMCIA card," said
] ] ] McIntosh-Smith. "With two chips on a PC Card, you can
] ] ] have 50 gigaflops on a laptop, running off a battery.
] ] ] That's equivalent to a small Linux cluster on your
] ] ] notebook."
] ]
] ] Its the FPU from hell!
]
] cool tech. useless for most, but the more computation we can
] get out of a watt, the better, I say.
]
] [one note though -- the wired author said the earth simulator
] was 10 TFlop, but he's off by about 3.5 x. From their
] webpage, the sustained performance of the Earth Simulator is
] 35.86 Tflop, with a peak of 40. Top500 confirms :
] http://www.top500.org/list/2003/06/?page ] Rooting around on the web, it's not clear how much of their processor has been prototyped in silicon, and to what degree their speed estimates are derived from simulations. They've been working on this or similar technolgy for 15 years or so, first as a graphics processor and then as a network processor for telecom applications. |
|
Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer
by Decius at 9:04 am EDT, Oct 14, 2003 |
] At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one
] of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. U:Looked up details on this because abaddon was calling bullshit on their numbers. Its 64 simple processors in an array, with 128k of (near) registers, all on one chip. Basically instead of using gate-space for branch prediction logic they are using it for ALUs. Its a good idea for specific applications which stand to benefit from this sort of optimization as opposed to what they do in your general purpose machines. Its not really the same as having a supercomputer in that these little processor elements are not as powerful as the P4s in your Beowolf Cluster by a very long shot. Thats not to say it isn't useful for problems in that space. I'm still waiting to see someone provide an FPGA as a co-processor which can be used for optimized gate logic implementations of your problem that get swapped in and out like a virtual memory system. It will come someday. |
There is a redundant post from mal not displayed in this view.
|
|
