Big machine ordered from Intel

[Bill Stewart]

At 08:40 AM 9/8/95 -0700, Patrick wrote:
>How much you want to bet that a first copy goes to virginia?
>> NY Times, Sept 8, 1995.
>> Intel Wins Contract to Develop World's Fastest
>> Supercomputer
>> San Francisco, Sept. 7 -- The Intel Corporation said
>> today that it had won a a contract from the Department of
>> Energy to develop what it called the world's fastest
>> supercomputer.
...
>> The machine, to be built at an estimated cost of $45
>> million, would use 9,000 of Intel's forthcoming P6
>> microprocessors linked in a configuration known as

Not likely.  It's the kind of machine Sandia _would_ use, especially
since they seem to be getting good support for nuclear-related
boondoggles even after the demise of the Cold War, and it's
also the kind of thing they could use for commercial applications
if they lose their nuclear funding, or use to say "But we _need_
to keep funding this program, we haven't yet gotten our money's
worth out of this big expensive computer", etc.
Also, the cost is roughly $5K/processor, which is probably more
than you'd need to build a MPP key-cracker, which doesn't need
as much interaction between processors.
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