> Where are the killer applications for the masses? You think many game > developers grok MPI? The most likely place would seem an online game > server.
Tasks like visual/speech recognition cannot be done in a robust way unless you go parallel. I'm sure a host of hard algorithmic problems also requires parallelism. The difficulty is that there is as yet no *standardized* parallel platforms to rely on. > The Cell processor has just been shipped to selected game developers. The > hardware > is chronically overhyped, but it's definitely going towards affordable > parallelism for the end user (adolescent and young adult gamer). Now that's something I'd like to program on... Maybe I can contact IBM for it ;) > > > FPGA accelerators are good, but you can't feed them fast enough. FPGA with > > > onboard memory might be pretty optimal. > > > > This sounds promising, especially because of lower R&D costs. > > Are you talking about individual developers? You can get a very decent > cluster for a price of a single FPGA developer kit. It is most emphatically > not cost effective. Well I made a mistake, FPGAs are good for prototyping some parallel hardware, they are not for AI developers whose main concern is getting a lot of computing power. > COTS clusters are the way to go. If you're latency-starved, platinum-plated > interconnect might be worthwhile. That's the status quo, in a nutshell. But how can you envisage cluster technology diffusing into desktops for home users? I understand that you're talking about developers and I agree that COTS clusters are perfect for this purpose. YKY ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
