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Chicks Winning?
Aug. 21st, 2004 08:23 pm(Hey, hey, we’re talking about high-performance computing, not women empowerment and other sociology stuff!)
Seymour Cray is quoted as saying, “If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?” (Implication being that a cheap PC cluster can never perform like a costly Cray.)
Now, imagine that, wouldn’t 1024 chickens plowing a field be interesting? (I have used four to six chickens to plow the field while developing it, which was later to be extended to 120 chickens. Still nowhere near that 1024. Hehehe.)
Experience shows that certain kind of fields, the chickens do plow well. Big advantage being that they’re real cheap. Anyone can build a cluster in their basement, and its quite fun to do so. On contrast, anyone can’t order a Cray when they feel like it, however fun that sounds :^)
This article says that the original Cray supercomputers were designed with four powerful processors (oxen). Today’s most powerful computers, including Crays, are designed with thousands of inexpensive processors (chicken).
In this interview, Paul Terry, chief technology officer of Burnaby, British Columbia-based Cray Canada explains why Linux clusters can not offer the same price-performance as supercomputers. Cary is building Linux-based supercomputers, by using what is called a Direct Connected Processor architecture, which should be able to eliminate much of the communication bottleneck from a beowulf-like interconnect, while retaining much of the cost factor.
So, are the chicken winning?
Seymour Cray is quoted as saying, “If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?” (Implication being that a cheap PC cluster can never perform like a costly Cray.)
Now, imagine that, wouldn’t 1024 chickens plowing a field be interesting? (I have used four to six chickens to plow the field while developing it, which was later to be extended to 120 chickens. Still nowhere near that 1024. Hehehe.)
Experience shows that certain kind of fields, the chickens do plow well. Big advantage being that they’re real cheap. Anyone can build a cluster in their basement, and its quite fun to do so. On contrast, anyone can’t order a Cray when they feel like it, however fun that sounds :^)
This article says that the original Cray supercomputers were designed with four powerful processors (oxen). Today’s most powerful computers, including Crays, are designed with thousands of inexpensive processors (chicken).
In this interview, Paul Terry, chief technology officer of Burnaby, British Columbia-based Cray Canada explains why Linux clusters can not offer the same price-performance as supercomputers. Cary is building Linux-based supercomputers, by using what is called a Direct Connected Processor architecture, which should be able to eliminate much of the communication bottleneck from a beowulf-like interconnect, while retaining much of the cost factor.
So, are the chicken winning?
