"A small chip-design firm will unveil a new processor Tuesday it says will
transform ordinary desktop PCs and laptops into supercomputers. "

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,60791,00.html

Any Comments? Is this true?

Oh, absolutely. If a marketer or salesperson said it, it *must* be true.

steve

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 05:16:44 GMT, SuperDeamon <Invalid.me@local.Invalid.org> wrote:

sure.... And it'll give the hard drive of your laptop the performance
of a supercomputer too?

In comp.os.linux.misc SuperDeamon <Invalid.me@local.invalid.org> wrote:
hummm... does a "Super" computer fly around, emits laser beams from the
IR ports, lift your car with the CD-tray and so on?
Or just slice Spam in little bits with superstrong claws extending
from the mouse? Oh no... wait... that's an X-Computer...

Davide

SuperDeamon wrote:
Follw the links to the manufacturer's press release at

http://www.clearspeed.com/news.php?pr=17

and you'll see that it is essentially a DSP-type chip. Quoting from the
seventh paragraph:

"The CS301 can serve either as a co-processor alongside an Intel or AMD
CPU within a high performance workstation [...] or as a standalone
processor for embedded DSP applications."

There are lots of other chips that fit that description. It is
certainly not a chip that can be used to upgrade existing machines for
higher performance across the board. For decent performance you'd need
re-designed hardware and specially coded software. Just like other DSP
chips on the market.

The company's own press release is a lot less dramatic than the
wired.com blurb.

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 05:16:44 GMT, SuperDeamon wrote:

=>
=>"A small chip-design firm will unveil a new processor Tuesday it says will
=>transform ordinary desktop PCs and laptops into supercomputers. "
=>
=>http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,60791,00.html
=>
=>Any Comments? Is this true?

What was considered a "super computer" 40 years ago
wouldn't cut it as a desktop these days. Why, I remember
the days when a roomful of computer couldn't do much more
than a handheld calculator, and when a PET could run a
refinery and do the payroll in its pare time. I remember
[snip a bunch of old man's gargle.]

So -- of course it's true.

Hah!

--
Wolf Kirchmeir
If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on the train?
(Garrison Keillor)
<just one w and plain ca for correct e-mail address>

Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
microseconds IIRC, corresponding to a clock frequency of about 80 KHz
using today's numbering system. Actually, the clock was quite a bit
faster than that, but it took a lot of cycles of the clock to do most
operations, and the memory took 12 microseconds to fetch up a 36-bit
word. A word would hold an integer or an instruction. The most memory
you could get was 32768 words. The thing sold for about $4,000,000 for a
large configuration (10 tape drives, a magnetic drum, card reader, line
printer, card punch; no hard drives). Since bytes were only 6 bits, you
could get 6 of them into a word, so the thing would hold almost 200K
6-bit bytes. The tape drives were the size of a refrigerator, pulled the
tape at 75 inches per second, and you could get 200 6-bit bytes per inch
on them.

Later machines in the series had clock rates around 500Khz, no larger
memories, tape drives would go 112.5 inches per second and put down 800
8-bit bytes per inch. When disk drives first came out, they had 10
tracks per cylinder and 100 cylinders, hydraulically positioned. They
ran at about 2400 rpm and were the size of a washing machine.

My first hard drive took three phase power to run the motor, had 200
cylinders, and held 40 Megabytes. That was a big deal back then. Now I
have about 12X more RAM in my desktop, and the new one I am building
will probably get 4 Gibabytes RAM.

The mid tower on my desk sold for about 10 hours rent of a 704, and has
2 550MHz Pentium III processors, has a tape drive that holds up to about
65 GBytes that fits a 5.25" bay, two 10,000rpm hard drives on an ULTRA-2
SCSI controller, 512Megabytes RAM.

So is my desktop a supercomputer? It sure was by 1950s standards. But by
today's standards it is obsolescent.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 1:55pm up 7 days, 9 min, 2 users, load average: 3.99, 3.96, 3.98

SuperDeamon wrote:

I don't know if it's true. However, years ago I used to maintain some VAX
11/780 computers, which were considered to be powerful "super minis" back
in those days. Then the 386 CPU came out, which was about as powerful as
the VAX CPU, so performance is a fast moving target.

BTW, anyone seen any Weitek co pros lately?

--

Fundamentalism is fundamentally wrong.

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