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From: ds@juniper09.cray.com (David Sielaff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super
Subject: Re: How you define a supercomputer ?
Message-ID: <144146.17259@timbuk.cray.com>
Date: 16 May 91 03:46:07 GMT
References: <1991May12.160205.9784@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1991May13.051215.8101@nas.nasa.gov> <377@nic.cerf.net> <1991May14.230507.8959@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
Organization: Cray Research, Inc., Eagan, MN
Lines: 23

In article <1991May14.230507.8959@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> sgombosi@isis.UUCP (Stephen O. Gombosi) writes:
>In article <377@nic.cerf.net> benseb@grumpy.sdsc.edu (Booker Bense) writes:
>In article <1991May13.051215.8101@nas.nasa.gov> eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) writes:
>>In article <1991May12.160205.9784@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
>>ury@mossad.huji.ac.il (ury segal) writes:
>>>How you define a supercomputer ? ( >100 MIPS ???)
>>
>>You have to ask the United States Department of Commerce.
>>
>My favorite definition (courtesy of John Levesque, Pacific-Sierra (I think)):
>
>supercomputer: a device for converting a cpu-bound problem into an I/O-bound
>               problem.
>
>-Steve

I forgot where I got this definition (possibly from Neil Lincoln, ex-ETA,
now at SSESCO):

Supercomputer: Any computer which is just two orders of magnitude less
	       powerful than what users really want. ;-)

Dave