Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: The Killer Micro From Hell
Message-ID: <21527@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 89 05:51:20 GMT
References: <42007@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <3090@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <42600@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 23

In article <42600@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> brooks@maddog.llnl.gov
(Eugene Brooks) writes:
>... I am not talking about a low cost work station here.

(Note that the R6000-based MIPS system is expected to be in the $100k
to $200k range, if I remember right: rather a bit more than your desktop
$10k micro.)

>Your original point is not being ignored, you are ignoring the high
>performance I-O systems that are appearing on Killer Micro powered systems.
>These high performance I-O systems are built of commodity disk drives
>and are much cheaper, while being faster, than high performance disk drives
>used on supercomputers.

A note of caution here: they are cheaper, but not (yet) faster.  The
CM Datavault (or whatever they are calling it these days) runs 39 SCSI
disks in parallel (32 bits + ECC).  These are doing fairly well if they
sustain > 1 MB/s each, so a Datavault gets ~32 MB/s.  With IPI disks
expected to do 8 MB/s each in the near future, a Datavault style system
could do 256 MB/s: still slower than Cray, but quite respectable.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris