Like the teasers for Red cameras, I'm getting increasingly bored of these announcements. Forgive me if you disagree, but it's hardly amazing anymore, because all you do to claim the crown is throw more and more processors at it. The only amazing thing is that someone has stumped up enough cash to get that many chips hooked up together.
If I had a million-billion-trillion pounds, I could just link up several XT Jaguars, and declare myself as owning the fastest supercomputer. Hardly amazing, is it.
I used to be wowed by supercomputer stats, when I was 15, but now I guess I'm old and cynical and can see that all it amounts to is large sums money rather than pure technology.
Good point. It used to be that supercomputers were at the leading edge of technology, but now they are basically large numbers of PC chips soldered together.
That's exactly my point - in their heyday, supercomputers consisted of fairly custom processors, and probably only a handful, each of which were far more powerful than anything else in the world. Now, as you rightly mention, it's just a load of cheap chips, but masses of them.
Yes, you might get better performance per dollar that way, but the romance and intrigue has been lost because of it.
It's not *just* the number of processors, though. Isn't there some pretty clever architecture around connecting them all, getting them all to run the right programs at the right time, etc?
That said, ultimately you need the clever architecture whether you have a top500-leading thing or something 'slow' with half the processors, so yes it's all about money as well.
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Like the teasers for Red cameras, I'm getting increasingly bored of these announcements. Forgive me if you disagree, but it's hardly amazing anymore, because all you do to claim the crown is throw more and more processors at it. The only amazing thing is that someone has stumped up enough cash to get that many chips hooked up together.
If I had a million-billion-trillion pounds, I could just link up several XT Jaguars, and declare myself as owning the fastest supercomputer. Hardly amazing, is it.
I used to be wowed by supercomputer stats, when I was 15, but now I guess I'm old and cynical and can see that all it amounts to is large sums money rather than pure technology.
Like Red cameras, I still want one though.
"If I had a million-billion-trillion pounds, I could just link up several XT Jaguars, and declare myself as owning the fastest supercomputer."
So, the answer to the question at the bottom of the article...
The "million-billion-trillion pounds" might not be 'accurate', and it would also depend on your personal definition of "several"
Good point. It used to be that supercomputers were at the leading edge of technology, but now they are basically large numbers of PC chips soldered together.
@ Labrador
That's exactly my point - in their heyday, supercomputers consisted of fairly custom processors, and probably only a handful, each of which were far more powerful than anything else in the world. Now, as you rightly mention, it's just a load of cheap chips, but masses of them.
Yes, you might get better performance per dollar that way, but the romance and intrigue has been lost because of it.
It's not *just* the number of processors, though. Isn't there some pretty clever architecture around connecting them all, getting them all to run the right programs at the right time, etc?
That said, ultimately you need the clever architecture whether you have a top500-leading thing or something 'slow' with half the processors, so yes it's all about money as well.