Hi Steve When supercomputers are retired, it usually (always?) means that their running costs (energy costs + maintenance cost) exceed their computational benefits. If you do the calculations, I have a hunch that:
- It will be more cost-effective for you and better for our planet were you to install a heat-pump (heats in winter, cools in summer) and use the monetary savings to buy time on a cluster or spend it on cloud computing resources whose designers locate and build datacentres to maximize performance/(cost & energy) ratio. - Instead of spending most if not all of your available time trying to keep your home supercomputer running, you can use that time more effectively designing AGI or earning money to buy super/cloud-computer time. Just my one-cent. Jean-Paul From: Steve Richfield [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 18 April 2013 22:05 To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] I want an obsolete supercomputer... Samantha, As you are doubtless aware, supercomputers have computational abilities 3 or more orders of magnitude beyond home computers. My son Ed and I have been playing at simulating biologically believable neural networks for quite a while. However, it is hard to do much of anything on a home computer, because they are soooo sloooow. Interactivity - forget it. Perhaps you have noticed some of my postings regarding the apparent need to compute on dP/dt rather than naked probabilities, as being apparently necessary for temporal learning. This means computing in real time, or at least slowed down real time. All this is leading to needing a computer that is a LOT faster than "modern" home computers. Whatever we get to heat one of our homes still won't be enough, but it will be 3 orders of magnitude closer - maybe even enough to gather some performance stats to help guide future efforts. This entire field is heading toward a "hump", as more-than-human computing power will be necessary to get real-world algorithms running, so they can be fine tuned to run on 1% of the hardware needed to get over the hump. I was just looking to explore a foothill. Steve ================= On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Samantha Atkins <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Steve Richfield <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: So, if anyone hears of an obsolete supercomputer becoming available, please let me know and/or pass my contact information on to whoever now has the supercomputer. What would you use it for exactly? Personally I own six computers not counting phones and tablets and an instance or two in the cloud. I would be quite proud if I kept those machines busy on something productive beyond running folding at home or the equivalent. That is I would be quite proud if I put them to work successfully myself on things I personally care about a great deal. So I am more interested in how to keep machines productively busy than in having a furnace that also computes. - samantha AGI | Archives<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> [https://www.listbox.com/images/feed-icon-10x10.jpg] <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Your Subscription [https://www.listbox.com/images/listbox-logo-small.png]<http://www.listbox.com> -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. AGI | Archives<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> [https://www.listbox.com/images/feed-icon-10x10.jpg] <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/5404257-22a42d7f> | Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Your Subscription [https://www.listbox.com/images/listbox-logo-small.png]<http://www.listbox.com> ________________________________ UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN This e-mail is subject to the UCT ICT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 9111. This e-mail is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If the e-mail has reached you in error, please notify the author. If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail you may not use, disclose, copy, redirect or print the content. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT it is sent by the sender in the sender's individual capacity. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
