Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 11 Feb 2010 08:46 Rick Jones <rick.jones2(a)hp.com> writes: > Does it even have to be a "supercomputer" to look like a big > multi-tiered switch? > > So, a system near to my paycheck - HP Superdome - a "cell based" (no, > not *that* cell thank you very much :) system - two processors on an > FSB with an agent chip that speaks to an interconnect fabric. I > suspect it would be considered a "real" computer produced by "real" > architects and developers. (those feeling snarky are encouraged to > send your snarks in direct email) we would drop by periodically and talk to the guy brought in to do superdome (had come by way of cray, kingston, & austin) ... HP had acquired convex ... and one of the supposedly objectives of superdome was less expensive flavor of examplar (& more cost effective than SCI). on the table for awhile was a proposal that superdome be done by a subsidiary where the participants got equity in the operation. old news blurb from 1997: HP/Convex has won a hard-fought competition to provide a 256-CPU, 184 GFLOPS Exemplar for a multi-year collaboration with CalTech and JPL. Steve Wallach says plans include a Merced-equipped 256 CPU Exemplar and, around 2000/2001, a Merced-powered TFLOPS system. .... snip ... there was still some internal competition going on. -- 42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Eugene Miya on 11 Feb 2010 20:33 In article <4547029a-1ec4-44df-a578-8af3fcd12b7a(a)b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>, Robert Myers <rbmyersusa(a)gmail.com> wrote: >On Feb 10, 5:34=A0pm, eug...(a)cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote: >> My cell phone's software still has problems, I have to get around to >> getting a new laptop, but I don't see a whole lot of problems with that. >> It's a wide field. >> >I owe my awareness of comp.risks to you. Thank Peter Neumann for editing Software Engineering Notes (SEN) and the ACM for giving him a stipend for moderating comp.risks. I wrote a book review for SEN when I was in grad school and got to know Peter that way. Santa Clara Valley is truly an amazing place where you just simply run into people. >I just had to edit the registry by hand just to "renew" the expired >license of my security software. I had to remove dead registry keys >that made the already-installed security vendor's software think that >a previous security vendor's software was still there. I guess you >can call that working, if you want. I can just imagine advising a >puzzled friend to invoke regedit. I had problems with OCR software in the 90s. I called the 800# which happened to be in Los Gatos. The support person turn out to a daughter of a Branch Chief at work (Frank). v1.2 went home to her Dad at dinner time, and into an envelope for me at work. Weird. Small world. -- Looking for an H-912 (container).
From: Eugene Miya on 11 Feb 2010 20:41 In article <NoydnZnJBdFi2O7WnZ2dnUVZ_r6dnZ2d(a)supernews.com>, Gavin Scott <gavin(a)allegro.com> wrote: >Eugene Miya <eugene(a)cse.ucsc.edu> wrote: >> The original Lucasfilm numbers for requirements (pixels) were fairly >> impressive as well. 16K on a size with 32-bit of color depth including alpha. > >A one gigabyte frame buffer? What would thay have fed it with? Even >today most film stuff is only rendered at 2K. You heard of EditDroid and the 2 that were made? And the market which didn't come to pass? They decided to get out of the hardware business except where it suited them. Those film guys, starting with Coppola are waiting for even higher resolution cameras, faster computers, and other "things." >> I would suggest 1 step beyond PC 3D to network 3D. A friend visited >> Cameron with Katzenberg (who insisted that he was not a technologist) one day >> on the Avatar set. That friend is actually attempting a new venture >> attempting to hire interns (cloudpic.com if people are interested). > >CloudPic looks like wide-area asset management, which is probably useful >but not interesting. I'm sure the Avatar production had most of those >issues solved considering their world-wide distributed teams. That's part of it. Bigger plans are a foot. >More interesting will be real-time collaboration using the virtual >photography and real-time performance capture -> rendered preview >stuff that Cameron and company are doing. The Avatar production gives >a nice preview of the future, but we're not yet there for portraying >human beings. Works awesome for 3m tall blue alien human/animal >morphs though (basically standing with one foot on either side of >the "uncanny valley"). Imagination and impressionism haven't died. It just depends how much you want to pay at this time. For all the people who like this stuff, there are people who don't like it (for various reasons, my friend M. for one in Portland). -- Looking for an H-912 (container).
From: Eugene Miya on 11 Feb 2010 20:45 In article <m3r5os7gpa.fsf(a)garlic.com>, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn(a)garlic.com> wrote: >BCS designed, installed and operated a nationwide telecommunications >network for NASA and provided voice, data, facsimile and full-motion >video across the network using the CRAY X-MP supercomputer. Gee, I wonder who's X-MP that was. We were running in batch mode with no excuses for video. Wonder what protocol they were using..... -- Looking for an H-912 (container).
From: Eugene Miya on 11 Feb 2010 20:47
In article <7thjn9FbcmU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Del Cecchi <delcecchinospamofthenorth(a)gmail.com> wrote: >That is not what killed osborne. What killed osborne was announcing a >better machine that was not in production and freezing the market when >they didn't have cash to cover the interval. I seem to recall another firm which announced a "better machine not in production...." -- Looking for an H-912 (container). |