Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!pioneer!eugene From: eugene@pioneer.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Hypercubes (place in life) Message-ID: <362@ames.UUCP> Date: Tue, 24-Feb-87 18:23:51 EST Article-I.D.: ames.362 Posted: Tue Feb 24 18:23:51 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 27-Feb-87 02:37:50 EST References: <1205@ogcvax.UUCP> <5699@amdahl.UUCP> <1210@ogcvax.UUCP> Sender: usenet@ames.UUCP Reply-To: eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene Miya N.) Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Lines: 40 Keywords: Marketing hype In article <1210@ogcvax.UUCP> pase@ogcvax.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) writes: >Distributed memory networks have been used for multi-user systems for several >years now - cf. Apollo networks. Some, at least, would argue they have been >used successfully. However, machines like the iPSC were designed to do heavy >computing, and NOT a lot of resource sharing. The cube manager is too much of >a bottleneck to be used as a resource server to the tower. > . . . >The hypercube is set up to do number crunching, with lots of operations per >byte of I/O. >-- >Doug Pase -- ...ucbvax!tektronix!ogcvax!pase or pase@Oregon-Grad Hypercubes were not designed to do a lot of heavy computing. You would be putting them into the Cray class of processor, and everyone's experience has been to the contrary. Heavy computing requires a well thought out (balanced) structure to prevent things like an I/O bottleneck. A hypercube is far from a typical end-user machine. The marketing hype which has surrounded hypercubes astounds me. It turns out the ONLY person I have heard a level-headed response from was Justin Rattner of Intel who stated that these machines are research machines to provide exposure to people on the problems of doing parallel programming. They are not designed to replace Crays or compete with them. To believe so would involve a great deal of misunderstanding. There are now five (if not more) companies selling hypercube architectures out there, I doubt if any will survive in the long term (in the hypercube market). Don't hold your breath for software either. Don't expect to take you dusty deck C or Fortran and have it automatically parallelize it (when it does, we will have achieved true AI 8-). From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize." {hplabs,hao,nike,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene p.s. the only buzzword I didn't use was A*a.