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From: jimf@idayton.field.intel.com (Jim Fister)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: superconcurrency and the cpu with 3 brains
Keywords: superconcurrency shared-memory
Message-ID: <1990Nov9.213205.8026@idayton.field.intel.com>
Date: 9 Nov 90 21:32:05 GMT
References: <1990Nov8.211217.4165@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Intel Corp./ Dayton Sales Office
Lines: 26

msp33327@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael S. Pereckas) writes:

>                    ``superconcurrency''---distributed heterogeneous
>supercomputing.  The idea is that since specialized processors do best
>on the tasks that they were designed for, what we need are collections
>of different specialized processors.  

>The machines can be widely distributed and networked, or all in the
>same box.  Perhaps this is a good use for the CPU with 3 brains.  Two
>RISC scalar units and a vector unit on one chip, anyone?  

Something like the i860?  

Sorry, couldn't resist.  Anyway, I've heard talk of people counting all of 
the transistors in, say, a Cray and thinking something like, gee, my micro
budget in the year 2000 will be twice that big.  What's to say that some
company won't just sweep some parallel supercomputer onto sand in the not-so-
far future?  AMD and Intel both have onsey, twosey pc-on-a-chip parts now.
Somebody should be putting a real computer (define real: non-DOS) there
any day, right?

Disclaimer:  They never tell me anything, so I can't speak for them.  I'm
just lil' ol' me.

Greetings from the Rocking Metropolis
JimF