Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!cbmvax!atha!rwa
From: rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS
Message-ID: <1175@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 18 Oct 89 16:47:27 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <127@csinc.UUCP> <33802@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <35986@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 19

brooks@vette.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) writes:

>In article <33802@ames.arc.nasa.gov> (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>>[...] a reverse claim:  People who want status symbols buy PC's for their
>>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*...  :-)
>A "PC" with a MIPS R3000 or an Intel i860 in it is about 70 times more cost
>effective for scalar codes, and we run a lot of those on our supercomputers

C'mon, Eugene, address the claim, not a straw man of your own
invention.  Hugh means people who buy intel-hackitecture machines from
Big Blue.  Do you really mean LLNL people buy mips-engine boxes as
office status symbols?  Not a very nice thing to say about your own
team ;-).  And then you contradict yourself by saying these same
mips-or-whatever boxes are 70 times more effective: are they status
symbols, or are they machines to do work?  Make up your mind :-) :-).

	Ross