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From: dprcxm@inetg1.ARCO.COM (Chuck Mosher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super
Subject: Re: MPP
Message-ID: <1991Jun27.123156.9881@Arco.COM>
Date: 27 Jun 91 12:31:56 GMT
References: <1991Jun24.172633.5978@nas.nasa.gov> <1991Jun26.140913.1238@Arco.COM> <1991Jun26.184744.16948@convex.com>
Sender: dprcxm@inetg1 (Chuck Mosher)
Organization: ARCO Oil and Gas Company
Lines: 29

Massive parallelism is a difficult transition for us.  We run IBM and
Cray mainframes for a wide range of applications.  Hundreds of users
run database applications during the day, a few large number-crunching
routines run at night.

The large applications are targets for parallel processing.  They are
few enough in number that we can consider re-writing the codes from
scratch for a particular architecture.  So far, we have found that
a different parallel decomposition and different language constructs
are necessary for each architecture out there, so we have to go
through a complete re-write for every machine we look at.  We clearly
need some standards.

So, we re-write our codes, they run faster and cheaper on the XYZ box.
But the XYZ box can't support our hundreds of users during the day,
so we have to keep our IBM and Cray systems going.  As a result, we
can't afford the big XYZ box that will let us tackle the problems
we can't solve today.

We end up being able to utilize small parallel systems, but only on 
a departmental level.  We need true multi-user support and good 
parallelizing compilers before we will be able to replace our big
mainframes and get on to the grand challenges.

-- 
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| Chuck Mosher     | Internet : ccm@arco.com     | Who needs an editor |
| ARCO, Plano, TX  | Telephone: (214)754-6468    | when you have ISPF? |
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