[9fans] good fun

[9fans] good fun

[ron minnich]

I know a lot of folks on this list like history, so check this one out:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/LA-6943-H.pdf

"                                             Further-
more, by using clip leads to short one side of the
vacuum-tube     flipflops, you could actually change
the contents of a register (while the machine was
stopped). A skilled operator, like Don Bradford or
Verna Ellingson Gardiner, could fetch a word into a
register, make a change in it using clip leads, and
store it back in memory in about the same time that
most modern operators can type a one-line com-
mand on a terminal.
"

enjoy.

ron

Re: [9fans] good fun

[erik quanstrom]

very, very cool.  thanks for the link, ron.

i wonder if richard feynman (who is mentioned) might
have criticized the ops/s vs. time graph on p. 5 for being
overly fit to one end point -- the accounting machines
in the lower left?

has anyone continued this graph to more recent times?

- erik

Re: [9fans] good fun

[ron minnich]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 4:49 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> very, very cool.  thanks for the link, ron.
>
> i wonder if richard feynman (who is mentioned) might
> have criticized the ops/s vs. time graph on p. 5 for being
> overly fit to one end point -- the accounting machines
> in the lower left?
>
> has anyone continued this graph to more recent times?
>

Would not be hard. Cray 1 is 1e8 in 1978 and we're now at 1e15.

It's not a uniform graph. Interesting that we hit 1e12 in 2000 or so
and are now at 1e15 ...I built a 10T in 2002, so there is a slight
slowing, but not much.

But those Cray 1 vs. cluster FLOP numbers are different. A Cray 1
vector flop rate is not easily compared to a cluster flop rate.

For $1m you can get a 40T system; the japanese earth simulator, 30T,
probably cost about $500M to build including all costs.

It's going to really ramp up with stuff like the Intel systems coming up.

thanks

ron