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From: davec@proton.amd.com (Dave Christie)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: The Killer Micro From Hell [Really: fight ...
Message-ID: <28674@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 8 Jan 90 18:11:47 GMT
References: <34030@mips.mips.COM> <4322@nttmhs.ntt.JP> <39807@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <3101@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>
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In article <3101@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> rhealey@ub.d.umn.edu (Rob Healey) writes:
>	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? 

Nothing.  But coming up with faster versions of classic supercomputers
has (IMHO) been much more difficult and costly, and the resulting
performance improvements not so spectacular, as compared to micros over
the past several years.  I think this will remain true for awhile,
although I think the micro performance growth curve will flatten as 
technology and the use of high performance implementation tricks matures.  

>	optical technologys. It seems foolish to me that super companys
>	would just stand still and let the KM's go wizzing by.

Of course they won't stand still, but like I said, its much more costly
for them to try to improve at the same rate, and of course that cost
gets passed on to the buyers, many of whom will be less and less willing 
to pay for it.  (But there will always be those who want max performance 
for application X at any cost.)

>
>>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.

It's too early to use this argument - such comparisons will be more valid
in a year or two when KMs such as the R6000 appear in very high memory and
i/o bandwidth systems.  

I think a valid generalization (it's hard to come up with one in this
group!) is that the application domain of KM's is growing, while the
application domain of traditional supers is not - one could probably
say it's shrinking, considering the applications that will migrate
to parallel and high b/w KM systems as they become available.  And
trying to support the development of costly, exotic supers in the face
of a shrinking application base just isn't going to cut it.
---------------------
Dave Christie              My opinions only, not my employers.