I would agree with all that you say on that, Charles. I'm using something right now that just might have knocked the socks off of the Cray Multimillion Whateveritwas of 25 years ago. I think it cost me less than $200 to build (with recycled hard drives, CD and DVD devices). I don't imagine there's much push to go beyond the 4Ghz level, (if that's where the bar is now - I haven't checked lately) but puttering along at 2.5Ghz seems to do just about everything I need. I'm not sure if there's another technical barrier in going faster, but it would seem that the bottleneck now is situated on the I/O buss, memory access and stuff such as that... It will be interesting to see how large scale multicore networking will evolve - Modeling the human brain might give way to a sentient and self-aware system within the lifetimes of many who are around now. -WaV
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Charles Goldsmith <wo...@justfamily.org>wrote: > 10 to 15 years ago, a "supercomputer" was much slower than our current > computers, so saying that we will have supercomputers in dorm rooms in > 10 years is kind of misleading. We have them in our houses today, > even our cell phones are more powerful than some of the earlier > supercomputers. > > My quad core mac has more power than supercomputers built 7 years ago, > so its all a relative point. > > It will be amazing how well computers scale in the next 10 years. The > megahertz/gigahertz race is basically over, they aren't making them > faster in that aspect, they are adding more core's, parallel > processing and upping the bus speeds that the cpu's communicate with > the rest of the computer (memory, video, hard drive, peripherals). > > Unless you are doing very processor intensive things, more than a > dual-core is a waste. Most modern applications don't even use more > than 1 core, video/audio encoding or computational research is about > the only thing that you can do to tax your home computers processor. > I say a dual-core, because of the modern Windows O/S, it's handy to > have one core for it, and the 2nd core for your application. More > than 2 are really wasted unless you are utilizing it for a specific > reason. Of course, this is all my opinion and observations :) > > Charles > > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 11:42 AM, David <dlocklea...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I am posting this off-topic here because nearly everybody on Cavetex > > uses computers, > > and a few Cavetex posters are computer enthusiast. > > > > ( please reply by subscribing to: ot-subscr...@texascavers.com ) > > > > > > Supercomputers are back in the news again. > > > > > http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9120741&source=rss_news > > > > IBM's new RoadRunner claims to be the fastest, by breaking > > the petaflop barrier, but Cray is already claiming they beat that. > > > > Meanwhile, wealthy computer users can purchase their very > > own supercomputer. > > > > http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2334950,00.asp > > > > While the starting price is $ 10,000, there are computers out there > > now in the $ 5,000 range that claim to be able to challenge > supercomputers, > > on certain task. > > > > It would seem probable that college students will have supercomputers > > in the dorm rooms in 10 years, well at least grad students and computer > > science majors. > > > > I bet there is a caver out there with the Apple 8 core computer. > > > > http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html > > > > And if that isn't fast enough for you, Apple plans to make it faster next > year: > > > > > http://www.macblogz.com/2008/11/13/intel-leaks-point-to-mac-pro-updates-early-next-year/ > > > > > > David Locklear > > Fort Bend County Armchair Cavers Association ( FBCACA ) > > > > > > Ref: > > > > > http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/09/16/cray-microsoft-team-up-to-sell-25k-windows-supercomputer-will-it-blue-screen/ > > > > http://www.xconomy.com/?attachment_id=4892 > > > > > http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Colfax-International-Launches-Tesla-Personal/story.aspx?guid=%7BC47183E9-3D9C-45EC-86C0-34AF72A0D011%7D > > > > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122697768258136325.html?mod=googlenews_wsj > > > > http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/546517/ > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Visit our website: http://texascavers.com > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com > > For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Visit our website: http://texascavers.com > To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com > For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com > >
