Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!dhinds From: dhinds@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: LINPACK 1000x1000 MFLOPS per $$$ Message-ID: <1990Jul20.190907.18947@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 20 Jul 90 19:09:07 GMT References: <2349@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Organization: AIR, Stanford University Lines: 24 In article <2349@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes: >In article mccalpin@pereland.cms.udel.edu (John D. McCalpin) writes: > >| (2) The $13,000 configuration includes no monitor or graphics adapter, >| etc. It is strictly a server, configured with 16 MB RAM and 120 MB >| disk. NFS is used to store results directly onto my graphics >| workstation. > > You have defined the solution by picking the dataset... You are >talking about a tiny problem here, not at all typical of what is run on >a Cray. Certainly there are problems requiring lots of CPU and tiny >memory, and it's nice that you have one. Workstations are good at that. >We run dedicated troff servers here, and they're workstations, too. I think you underestimate the amount of code that falls in your "workstation" catagory that is run on Crays. In my field (biochemistry), things like protein structure prediction, drug design, and molecular dynamics calculations are routinely done on Crays by many people. Our lab recently got an SGI 4D/240 system to do our MD work. We get much more done than we ever could when we were using a Cray. Our code would easily fit in this RS6000 configuration, and would probably beat the 4D. -David Hinds dhinds@popserver.stanford.edu