Yesterday's supercomputer is todays PDI (built into your cell phone as
a giveaway). I remember when a megabyte was a megabyte. the first
serious database machine I bought was a Sperry IT with a 80286 and a
40 MB drive. Five K bux. This afternoon I tore apart one of my 1.5
terabyte drives because it had croaked. I wound up keeping one of the
two 750GB drives out of the array and sticking it in a $39 enclosure,
then I threw away the rest of the junk and bought a 2 TB drive at
Fry's for $369. Two years ago a terabyte cost about a thousand bucks,
four years ago it would have been about $5K, seven years ago I did a
campaign for Tektronix about their new 1TB Profile--a raid array for
storing video. The tab was about $50K.
Current state of the art for even just your laptop is a dual quad
Intel chip. Most of the software available can't really use it's
capabilities. Super computers are either extremely fast in a serial
sense (limited) or massively parallel. If they are massively parallel
than everything that runs on them needs to be optimized up the wazoo,
and it's terrifically difficult to get stuff to work well. The
simplest approach is to guess at a whole bunch of answers and start
processing each guess while the correct answer is computed, then toss
away any processes based on the wrong guess. Massively wasteful but
hey, it's just processor cycles.
It really all comes down to software and the fundamental limitations
of computing. Supercomputers just ain't that super.
On Oct 22, 2008, at 6:42 PM, David W. Riddle wrote:
> At 06:28 PM 10/22/2008, you wrote:
>> I suspect that Computer modeling of aerodynamics could be much
>> better if the
>> teams had super-computers with proper software. But that in itself
>> would be
>> at least as expensive as wind tunnels and maybe not as predictable.
>
> Ummm... They do use Supercomputers for CFD.
>
>
http://insidehpc.com/2007/07/31/sgi-the-official-supplier-of-hpc-to-mclaren-f
> 1/
>
> SGI: the official supplier of HPC to McLaren F1 07.31.2007
>
> Since were apparently all about covering the
> super exclusive HPC-in-racing niche news market, heres something
> cool.
>
> McLaren builds supercars, and uses supercomputing
> to get the aerodynamics right. But dial the
> Wayback machine to 2005 when McLaren
>
> appointed SGI as its official supplier for CFD
> supercomputing, storage and visualization
> equipment. McLarens initial purchase included an
> SGI Altix supercomputer, visualization solutions,
> SGI InfiniteStorage system and the SGI
> InfiniteStorage CXFS shared filesystem. The
> company has subsequently added to this investment
> in July 2007, with the addition of (and ongoing
> enhancements to) two further SGI Altix
> supercomputers, and the recent introduction of
> the SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF).
>
> No details on the computers purchased other than
> a fourfold increase in productivity. Details from SGI.
>
> Here is the Press Release from talking about it
>
>
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2007/july/formula.htm
> l
>
> And a page at MCLaren too
>
> http://www.mclaren.com/partners/interims/sgi-combination/index.html
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Bill Babcock
Babcock & Jenkins
Billb@bnj.com
503.936.7660
www.bnj.com
Editor
Ke Nalu e-Magazine
Paddlesurfing's Web Journal
Bill@kenalu.com
www.kenalu.com
blog: www.ponohouse.com/ponoblog
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