Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!dg!chris
From: chris@dg.dg.com (Chris Moriondo)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS (Actually parallel systems)
Message-ID: <221@dg.dg.com>
Date: 18 Oct 89 23:01:46 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <20336@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: uunet!dg!chris (Chris Moriondo)
Organization: Data General, Westboro, MA.
Lines: 15

In article <20336@princeton.Princeton.EDU> mg@notecnirp.edu (Michael Golan) writes:
>3) personally I feel parallel computing has no real future as the single cpu
>gets a 2-4 folds performance boost every few years, and parallel machines
>constructions just can't keep up with that. It seems to me that for at least 
>the next 10 years, non-parallel machines will still give the best performance 
>and the best performance/cost.

Actually, the rate of improvement in single cpu performance seems to have
flattened out in recent supercomputers, and they have turned to more
parallelism to continue to deliver more performance.  If you project the
slope of the clock rates of supercomputers, you will see sub-nanosecond
CYCLE times before 1995.  I don't see any technologies in the wings which
promise to allow this to continue...

chrism