LFCS: A $99 not supercomputer

Posted May 10, 2013 21:40 UTC (Fri) by daglwn (guest, #65432)
In reply to: LFCS: A $99 *not* supercomputer by jake
Parent article: LFCS: A $99 supercomputer

> I can't say for sure that Andreas wrote that, but one would guess he could
> at least have put a stop to it if he wanted.

It's too bad if Andreas is pushing this view. It's misleading.

> And the board does have:
> processor, memory, network, I/O, software

Well of course it does. It is a computer system after all.

> perhaps not in sufficient quantity/quality for your taste, however.

It's not about my taste at all. Ask anyone in HPC. The fact that processor, memory, network, I/O and software are robust, tightly coupled and highly tuned is what separates a supercomputer from a cluster and from Parallella.

Just as one example, GigE is nowhere near enough to handle climate simulations, modeling stars and analyzig combustion. It's not just about bandwidth and latency.

to post comments

LFCS: A $99 not supercomputer

Posted May 11, 2013 13:26 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Of course, there's no way that anything faster than GigE can be used in anything even remotely consumer-grade until it gets a bit cheaper. I considered going to 10GbE on the local net a while back, but looked at the prices, screamed, and decided maybe in ten years or when I win the lottery. Just a simple four-port switch was several thousand pounds!

LFCS: A $99 not supercomputer

Posted May 13, 2013 18:08 UTC (Mon) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link]

"It's not just about bandwidth and latency."