Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS
Message-ID: <1T7kRC#74k11v=eric@snark.uu.net>
Date: 16 Oct 89 00:29:13 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Lines: 36

In <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> brooks@maddog.llnl.gov wrote:
> The best of the microprocessors now EXCEED supercomputers for scalar
> performance and the performance of microprocessors is not yet stagnant.
> On scalar codes, commodity microprocessors ARE the fastest machines at
> any price and custom cpu architectures are doomed in this market.

Yes. And though this is a recent development, an unprejudiced observer could
have seen it coming for several years. I did, and had the temerity to say so
in print way back in 1986. My reasoning then is still relevant; *speed goes
where the volume market is*, because that's where the incentive and development
money to get the last mw-sec out of available fabrication technology is
concentrated.

Notice that nobody talks about GaAs technology for general-purpose processors
any more? Or dedicated Lisp machines? Both of these got overhauled by silicon
microprocessors because commodity chipmakers could amortize their development
costs over such a huge base that it became economical to push silicon to
densities nobody thought it could attain.

You heard it here first:

The supercomputer crowd is going to get its lunch eaten the same way. They're
going to keep sinking R&D funds into architectural fads, exotic materials,
and the quest for ever more ethereal heights of floating point performance.
They'll have a lot of fun and generate a bunch of sexy research papers.

Then one morning they're going to wake up and discover that the commodity
silicon guys, creeping in their petty pace from day to day, have somehow
managed to get better real-world performance out of their little boxes. And
supercomputers won't have a separate niche market anymore. And the
supercomputer companies will go the way of LMI, taking a bunch of unhappy
investors with them. La di da.

Trust me. I've seen it happen before...
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.uu.net    (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)