Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!csinc!rpeglar
From: rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar x615)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS
Summary: Look again.
Message-ID: <128@csinc.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 89 15:09:33 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <127@csinc.UUCP> <33802@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Organization: Control Systems, Inc., St. Paul MN
Lines: 85

In article <33802@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
> In article <127@csinc.UUCP> rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar x615) writes:
> 
> >that point for almost a generation.  I believe that it will take at least
> >one more generation - those who weaned on machines from CDC, then CRI -
> >before a more reasonable approach to machine procurement comes to pass.
> 
> In my experience, gov't labs are very cost conscious.  I could tell a lot of
> stories on this.  Suffice it to say that many people who have come to gov't labs
> from private industry get frustrated with just how cost conscious the gov't can
> be (almost an exact quote: "In my last company, if we needed another 10GBytes,
> all we had to do was ask, and they bought it for us."  That was when 10 GBytes
> cost $300 K.)  The reason supercomputer are used so much is that they get the 
> job done more cheaply.  You may question whether or not new nuclear weapons 
> need to be designed, but I doubt if the labs doing it would use Crays 
> if that were not the cheapest way to get the job done.  Private industry 
> concerns with the same kinds of jobs also use supercomputers the same way.  
> Oil companies, for example.  At various times, oil companies have owned more
> supercomputers than govt labs.

Good point.  However, oil companies in particular are notorious for having
procurements follow the "biggest and baddest = best" philosophy.  Hugh, you
know as well as I that supercomputer procurement is not a rational or
scientific process - it's politics, games, and who knows who.  Cheap,
efficient, usable, etc.etc. - all take a back seat to politics.  However,
if the "job" is defined as running one (or some small number of) code(s)
for hours then there is no question that only a super will do.  The point
that Brooks' doesn't make, but implies only, is that the *way* scientific
computing is being done changes all the time.  One-job killer codes are
becoming less prevalent.  The solutions must change as the workload
changes.  Sure, there are always codes which cannot be run (Lincoln's 
attributed quote (compressed) - "supercomputer == only one generation
behind the workload" - but yesterdays' killer code, needing 8 hours of
4 million 64-bit words, can now be done on the desktop.  (see below)

> 
> >Thus, I disagree that there will *always* be a market for this sort of
> >thing.  Status symbols may be OK in cars, but for machines purchased with
> >taxpayer dollars, the end is near.  Hence, Brooks' "attack of the killer
> >micros".
> 
> I will make a reverse claim:  People who want status symbols buy PC's for their
 
Please.  Are you saying that NAS,LLNL,LANL,etc.etc. don't compete for status
defined as big,bad hardware?  Just the glorious battle between Ames and
Langley provides one with enough chuckles to last quite a while.

> office.  These PC's, the last time I checked, were only 1/1000th as cost
> effective at doing scientific computations as supercomputers.  Talk about 
> *waste*...  :-)
> 
> 

Look again.  I'll give you a real live example.  Buy any 386 33mhz machine,
with a reasonable cache (e.g. at least 128 kB) of fast SRAM, and 8 MB
or so of (slower) DRAM.  Plug in a Mercury co-processor board, and use
Fortran (supplied by Mercury) to compile Dr. Dongarra's Table One
Linpack.  Results on PC - 1.8Mflops.  Using a coded BLAS, you get 4.7
Mflops.  This is 64-bit math.  Last time *I* checked, the Cray Y-MP
stood at 79 Mflops.  Cost of Cray Y-MP?  You and I know what that is.
Even discounting life cycle costing (which for any Cray machine, is
huge due to bundled maintenance, analysts, etc.etc.), the performance ratio
of Y to PC is 79/1.8 = 43.88.   I'll bet my year's salary that the price
ratio is higher than that.  To ballpark, price for the PC setup is
around $20K.  Moving down all the time.  Even if the Y-MP 1/32 was
only $2M (which it is not) that would be 100:1 price ratio.

Of course, that is only one code.  Truly, your mileage will vary.  The
price/performance ratio of an overall system is dependent on many
variables.


After all that, Brooks' point is still valid.  Micros using commodity
HW and cheap (sometimes free) software are closing the gap.  They have
already smashed the price/performance barrier(for many codes), and the
slope of their absolute performance improvements over time is much larger 
than any of the true super vendors (any==1 now, at least US)


The game is nearly over.  

Rob


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