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From: bcase@uiucdcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Re: Caltech's Cosmic Cube
Message-ID: <27800041@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Feb-85 18:38:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.27800041
Posted: Thu Feb 14 18:38:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Feb-85 06:55:21 EST
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Nf-From: uiucdcs!bcase    Feb 14 17:38:00 1985



Now wait a minute....

The cosmic cube, in its 64 processor configuration, exists and is
functional.  It is quite price competitive, being about 2 orders
of magnatude better in price/performance than the Cray.  It has
been used by someone (at Caltech) to work on a very large problem
and although it took some weeks (or months, I cannot remember now),
it was successful (and purchasing the Cray time would have been
out of the question in this case).  Perhaps more importantly for
demonstrating the feasibility of this configuration, there is an
article in the current Electronics Week describing the Intel version
of this machine, the iPSC (Intel Personal Super Computer is one
of the possible expansions).  As with most parallel computers,
this machine works best on a restricted class of problems; however,
it is believed that the class includes alot of the most interesting
ones.  It is also believed that the demand for supercomputing is
very elastic with respect to price; perhaps this explains Intel's
entry into this market.  Selling 64 8086s with each machine is a
good deal for them also....