> The system, named Rime, has eight processors, 64 gigabytes of 
> memory, 1 
> terabyte disk and a 500 MHz system clock. System peak 
> performance is 64 GFLOPS.
> 
> http://www.arsc.edu/pubs/bulletins/SX6Install.shtml
> 
> Jeroen's comment: now *that* is what I call computing power!   :-)

well.... I guess... here at Freightliner we have 20+ Multiprocessor servers
and 100+ uni-processor systems for a total around  100 xeon processors, and
100 P3 xeon processors. Cumulative memory is about 160 Gigabytes. We have
24+ terrabytes of RAID 5 disk storage, accessable from a SAN, and all of the
servers are connected with Gigabyte Ethernet for a total cost under 2
million.

If we clustered all of these servers, I estimate that we could exceed this
Cray's systems performance if measured as an application servers. 

However, doing vector processing is somethink that Crays do (well, its
pretty much all they do)... the Cray is a good solution. X-86 systems can do
vector processing, but it is not what they were primarily built to do.
The Cray here can be pumped up to a maximum of 8 TFLOPS... this is hefty
iron!

Costwise, is is cheaper to build a clustered 64-bit X-86 based system, than
to build a Cray system. 

On a national security level, Cray's are easier to steal and sneak out of
the country, but any Controlled Country can buy multiprocessor systems (not
from us directly) and cluster them together to do nuclear simulations. I
guess it is a toss up as to which system represents a greater threat to our
safety.

Nerd From Hell



> 
> Jeroen
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
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