Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!uwvax!umn-d-ub!rhealey
From: rhealey@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Rob Healey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: The Killer Micro From Hell [Really: fight ...
Message-ID: <3101@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>
Date: 6 Jan 90 21:27:04 GMT
References: <34030@mips.mips.COM> <4322@nttmhs.ntt.JP> <39807@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: rhealey@ub.d.umn.edu (Rob Healey)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
Lines: 27

In article <39807@ames.arc.nasa.gov> lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>(just making this up out of whole cloth) with a starting clock speed of
>100MHz, scaled up to 200 MHz by 1992 or 1993, could put Cray out of business.
>SGI will build scalar graphics workstations with half the power of the then
>current Crays at 1/100 the cost, and Ardent will do the vector version, with
>a similar price advantage.  An amusing idle speculation (?)
>
	For the first part, if MIPS, or whoever, can do 200MHz by 1993 what
	prevents CRI, as opposed to CCC, from comming up with a faster
	version of it's architecture? Remember, CCC is the Cray 3 and CRI
	is the 2, X & Y and whatever comes after that. Also, what about 
	the Japanese companys that are working on or that have supers? From
	what I've read of the KM wars so far it seems to me that most
	are assuming that supers will not improve in speed by that much.
	I question whether this is a valid assumption to make. Also, there's
	always the possiblility of supers switching to optical or hybrid
	optical technologys. It seems foolish to me that super companys
	would just stand still and let the KM's go wizzing by.

>Now, about that memory bandwidth?
>
	Good question! And how about I/O bandwidth to disks? How about network
	bandwidth? Might as well include anything else that might bottleneck.
	Supers are not supers by MIPS alone, memory, disk and networking all
	go along with the super title.

			-Rob