[Beowulf] commercial clusters

[Robert G. Brown]

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Douglas Eadline wrote:

> Vincent,
>
> I fear I have fallen into a "vincent-hole" in which there exists
> a point at which a discussion-horizon is crossed
> and my ability to understand what you are talking
> about ceases to exist. For me, after crossing this threshold
> the point of the discussion is lost and I enter a state
> of maximum entropy.

If by this you mean it is time for this thread to DIE DIE DIE then I
agree heartily.

Chess is arguably HPC and arguably interesting as a class of
particularly difficult parallel problem, but it is also definitely not
mainstream HPC.

    rgb

>> Right now the big games (other than chess) sell 3-5 million copies a year
>> (50-100 euro a product),
>> and compared to that chess is very tiny. Chessmaster still claims 4
>> million
>> unit sales, but that's over
>> a number of years, not within 1 year.
>>
>> So in that sense releasing a chessproduct is commercially not so
>> interesting.
>> Creating some new game, making a lot of bla bla around it and hope to get
>> one of the games that sell 3-5 million copies a year, is far more
>> interesting.
>>
>> If you compare that with hardware, then those manufacturers still rip off
>> people. That new quad
>> core2 chip is going to release at 999 euro next month and of course is
>> very
>> fast.
>>
>> But just look to the huge price of it as compared to software games.
>>
>> Vincent
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Douglas Eadline" <deadline at eadline.org>
>> To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <diep at xs4all.nl>
>> Cc: "Geoff Jacobs" <gdjacobs at gmail.com>; "Angel Dimitrov"
>> <stormlaboratory at yahoo.com>; <beowulf at beowulf.org>; "Jim Lux"
>> <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov>; "Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:44 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>> Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>> -- snip --
>>>>
>>>> Well the hard facts is that hundreds of thousands of $3000-$20k
>>>> chesscomputers (dedicated with a 10Mhz chip) have been sold until the
>>>> pc
>>>> was
>>>> faster than the dedicated chesscomputers. A vaste multiple indeed of
>>>> that
>>>> of
>>>> $50-$1000 computers has been sold at the time.
>>>
>>> Are you saying:  At least 100,000 chess computers were sold for an
>>> average of $6000 (US) for a total of $600,000,000 before the PC was
>>> introduced. Almost a billion dollar chess computer market segment.
>>> You are right, that is a hard fact to believe.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Doug
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
>

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu