[sdiy] fantasy computer poll

[Phil Harbison]

Senso wrote:
 > Global real-time train spotting?

That is certainly one of the more interesting responses I
have received. Maybe I will use it to control my N-scale
layout! Now I just need something to keep the *other* 511
processors busy.

Jonathan Lutz wrote:
> E-mail and Porn.

DoOd, I said *other* than the obvious application! :-)

Pat Kammerer wrote:
 > Uhm... I'd read my Synth DIY posts...

If you need 512 processors for that, you must be a *very*
fast reader.

Phillip Gallo wrote:
 > Dismantle and sell 502 of the processors; also sell 2024
 > of the 2048GB of memory, [...]

If I only wanted the money for the parts, I would not bother
building it in the first place.

Richard Wentk wrote:
 > This being a DIY list, it's maybe worth mentioning that
 > you can build one of these for about $100,000 now.

I doubt it could be constructed for twice that. The 2048
1GB DIMMs alone are about $240K (at $119 for DDR333 DIMMs
without ECC which is the best price I've seen). Of course
at that volume I would expect quite a discount, but then
you also have the cost of the processors, boards, etc.

 > Hey, it's not peanuts, but some people have that kind of
 > cash lying around.

I don't have that kind of cash but I was not planning to
build this thing on my own.

 > >    + directly synthesize an entire orchestra
 >
 > Ha. Processor power won't be the problem for that one.
 > But you'll run out of life before you can finish the job
 > properly.

I was thinking the array could be used to analyze every
instrument, then each processor could be assigned to
synthesize one instrument in an orchestra. Granted that
would be a lifetime of analysis.

 > > + search genomics databases for DNA matches
 > Boring.

Not to the CDC, which indirectly provides my paycheck.

 > > + large scale simulations
 > Also boring.

Not to the DoD, which previously provided my paycheck.

 > > + extremely fast search engine (Google on steroids)
 > Google has slightly better hardware than this, I suspect.

Doubtful. The last I heard they were using a large IBM
p690 cluster which is certainly way cool but not in the
same league as the array I described. I believe the max
p690 configuration is 32 CPUs (64 processors since the
Power4 has dual processor cores on chip).