Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site hoptoad.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: Apple's new Cray Message-ID: <562@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 02:48:28 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.562 Posted: Thu Feb 27 02:48:28 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 04:12:06 EST References: <90@pyramid.UUCP> Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 27 In article <90@pyramid.UUCP>, dan@pyramid.UUCP (Danial Carl Sobotta) writes: > > Minneapolis, February 18, 1986 -- Cray Research, Inc., announced today > >that Apple Computer, Inc. has ordered a CRAY X-MP/48 supercomputer. > > ... The system will be used to simulate future hardware and > >software architectures and to accelerate new product development. > > Sounds like a load of B.S. to me!! Why would Apple need that much > power to simulate their next PC??? I mean, is this overkill or what!! They are serious. I believe their intention is to do hardware-level simulation of completely new (not yet built) products, so they can develop the software and debug it "in real time" while running on a simulation of a proposed product. This should speed up product development because there's always a stage in development where the software people are waiting for the hardware to come up. (You can make only so many changes and then you'd better debug.) They apparently believe a Cray running full tilt can emulate e.g. a Mac and run at about the same speed as the micro would. Plus have much better debugging facilities. If it introduces one major product two months early I bet it pays for itself handsomely. Or if it improves that product by 30% because they could test 20 or 30 options (cache? 8K cache? 64K cache? faster clock with more wait states? video rams versus regular rams? ...) when their competitors have to guess and just try one or two. I wish I'd thought of it... -- John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa