The Petaflops Boondoggle Computer (was PET_ard)

[Peter Trei]

> On Sun, 29 Sep 1996 12:16:27 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
> 
> >Symmetric multiprocessing is available, but it's often much less hassle to
> >have a single CPU running at 200 MHz than to try games with multiple
> >processors (which means more PCB real estate, more sockets, more of other
> >things).
> 
> As far as SMP goes, it's actually not all that expensive.  People in the
> linux-smp list have reported differences of as little as $50 for a
> uniprocessor vs. dual pentium system.   Of course, every so often we'll get a
> message about a $30,000 system that can handle up to <drool>64 Pentium
> Pros</drool>! 

Check out http://www.ssd.intel.com/tflop.html, where Intel is building
a 9000 Pentium Pro (200 MHz) machine for Sandia. Yes, it runs Unix,
and they've already delivered the first 64 processor node.

When finished, it will have 600Gbyte RAM, 200Tbyte disk, and run at
about 1.8 Tflops, and cover about 1600 square feet.

Price? 46 M$, or about $5k/processor.


Peter Trei
Senior Software Engineer
Purveyor Development Team                                
Process Software Corporation
http://www.process.com
trei at process.com