[Beowulf] dollars-per-teraflop : any lists like the Top500?

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

On 7/1/10 9:03 AM, "Jon Forrest" <jlforrest at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Another reason why some vendors are willing to
> sell stuff at reduced prices to universities is
> for visibility. The thinking is that when grad
> students (finally) graduate and go off into
> industry, they'll want to buy the same stuff
> they used when they were students. I'm not
> sure how valid this approach is, but I don't
> argue with it.
>

Giving it away for free to educational institutions worked for Unix, eh? (at
least in the long run)

And IBM used to give very attractive lease rates to universities (in the
good old days, you couldn't BUY an IBM mainframe, only lease them)

An interesting question is whether this strategy would be viable today,
given the more short term return orientation of the capital markets.