[extropy-chat] 70 teraflops

[BillK]

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:24:43 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> 
> You're projecting our desires again. The reality is different, both the past,
> the present, and the near future.
> 
> What will happen after that is not yet obvious.
> 

Have you heard about Orion Multisystems?

Press Release Aug 30, 2004:
<http://www.orionmulti.com/news/pr_083020042>

Specs:
<http://www.orionmulti.com/products/descriptions>

"Orion's DS-96 deskside Cluster Workstation has 96 nodes with 300
gigaflops (Gflops) peak performance (150 Gflops sustained), up to 192
gigabytes of memory and up to 9.6 terabytes of storage. It consumes
less than 1500 watts and fits unobtrusively under a desk. Orion's
DT-12 desktop Cluster Workstation has 12 nodes with 36 Gflops peak
performance (18 Gflops sustained), up to 24 gigabytes of DDR SDRAM
memory and up to 1 terabyte of internal disk storage. (1) The DT-12
consumes less than 220 watts and is scalable to 48 nodes by stacking
up to four systems."

Their 'big idea' is to put 12 processors on each board.
Up to 36 Gflops on a desktop Linux cluster for 10,000 USD. Not too bad?

The up-to-300 Gflops floor-standing box costs about 100,000 USD and is
getting more towards the small super-computer range.

Some progress?

BillK