From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <3EBB0FDA.4050609@ameritech.net> From: northern snowfall User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020518 Netscape6/6.2.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] design clairvoyance & the 9 way References: <200305090049.h490ne527735@augusta.math.psu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 21:18:02 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a5939ee0-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > > >You missed my point. There's nothing wrong with asking whether SMP is >still relevant. See, that's the thing. The current trends seem to be >*away* from SMP machines and towards clusters of single-CPU machines; I >remember when The Abyss was made on clusters of multi-processor SGI >Iris systems; Toy Story was then made on a cluster of multi-processor >SPARCstation 20's; then Titanic was (partially) made on a cluster of >single-CPU Alpha's running Linux. Maybe Pixar is using SMP machines >because that's where the sweet spot is in terms of price/performance. >But it's been that way in the past, and then it's changed. Whatever is >happening now doesn't mean it will be that way in two years, or five. >In other words, the future trend is likely to be uniprocessor machines >connected by a really fast network, not big SMP machines connected by a >fast network. See, for instance, the new blade systems being shipped >by various vendors. > Oh, I did miss what you were saying. Hopefully because I just woke up. I wasn't condemning Sam, I was just making the observation that SMP research is necessary for more than a few great reasons. Thats probably why I completely ignored your point about condemning someone for asking a question, because I didn't feel that I was. People totally have a right to ask any question they want. I also have a right to respond. I can understand the point of moving away from SMP to clusters of single CPU machines, simply because they're getting so much cheaper. However, SMP x86 is becoming cheaper, too. It might actually become cheaper to run 10 3CPU SMP machines versus 20 or 30 single CPU x86 machines. Talking about RISC price ranges isn't my best trait, but, when the Sun Blades came out, a Blade100 was still around $1,300 for the full package that included a 501mhz UltraSPARC processor. Knowing I can get a couple x86 machines for the same price (SMP or not), I might choose to skip out on the Sun. Besides, the Blades (Sun or otherwise) are really designed to be workstations, aren't they? If you're talking about what is happening now versus what will be in a few years from now, thats why we look at the trends in the research institutions and the trends in places doing groundbreaking work in their field. Find out what they need and what they use (or want to use), then look at trends in the public sector that may purport that these techniques go global, etc. Looking at places like Pixar and Lucas, not to mention the Yahoo/Google farms, etc, gives us a more-likely-candidate perception of what the future will look like. Thats why there are followers versus leaders. Most people end up doing what's worked for the people willing to try new things. That becomes trend. >