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From: fay@encore.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Hypercubes (place in life)
Message-ID: <1111@encore.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Mar-87 13:54:34 EST
Article-I.D.: encore.1111
Posted: Mon Mar  2 13:54:34 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Mar-87 19:10:26 EST
References: <1205@ogcvax.UUCP> <5699@amdahl.UUCP> <loral.1379> <1210@ogcvax.UUCP> <362@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: fay@encore.UUCP (Peter Fay)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp., Wellesley Hills, MA
Lines: 32

In article <362@ames.UUCP> eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene Miya N.) writes:
>
>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.
>
>The marketing hype which has surrounded hypercubes astounds me. 
>...
>  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).

I agree with your criticism of marketing hype, but not at all with your
prognosis. At least one major oil company is buying large numbers of
hypercubes (not Intel's) to do seismological work (replacing very
expensive on-line time with their Crays). Some hypercubes have made very
substantial improvements on Intel's design.

Granted, one company using them for one narrow application doesn't make
hypercubes the final word in computing, but neither are hypercubes doomed
just because Intel made a mistake using ethernet chips to communicate
between the nodes. That has problem has been ameliorated (though not
solved).

The cost benefits are incredible when one realizes that these programs
actually get better turn-around time on a $12,000 hypercube than a
batch-processing multi-million-dollar Cray.

{linus,talcott,decvax,ihnp4,allegra,necis,compass}!encore!fay