On 3/23/07, Bill Page <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "In the end the calculation took about 77 hours on the > supercomputer Sage." > > Would it be *that* embarrassing to admit that almost anyone > with a high end "gaming" desktop computer could do this same > calculation in about the same amount of time? Perhaps yes, > given how much NSF money has gone into supporting super > computer projects...
(1) I agree that calling SAGE a supercomputer is technically incorrect (and I had nothing to do with it). (2) You are incorrect that somebody could have done the calculation they did with a high end "gaming" desktop. Sage.math is a $37K computer (paid for by the NSF) with 64GB RAM; it was *incredibly* hard for them to do the calculation using only 64GB RAM + swap, and even then they used many of the cores to speed up the computation. The work they did was extremely memory intensive. > For some reason this type of journalism and "science by press > release" disturbs me. Am I alone in this reaction? I am disturbed by all science journalism as soon as I know anything about the topic being discussed. Am I alone in this reaction? > Do we have to promote our work this way? "We" are not promoting it this way -- I had nothing to do with it, nor did anybody else on sage-devel. > BTW, congratulations to the mathematicians of the Atlas project. > In spite of the hype, this is of course a momentus result! Agreed! -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
