[Beowulf] Has anyone actually seen/used a cell system?

[Vincent Diepeveen]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm at xmission.com>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <diep at xs4all.nl>

[snip]
>> Which is my bottom line point. You'll need 1000 compiler programmers to 
>> get your
>> language
>> supported well.

> Well I believe this 1000 compiler programmers number is quite high.
> Certainly that isn't needed for a simple language like C.  One or
> two man years is sufficient to write a usable and decent optimizing
> C compiler.
[snip]
> Eric

The crucial word you use is 'decent'. That's open to judgement.

The only reason some years ago for me to move from DOS to windows, was the 
hard fact that visual c++ generated executables executing time 20% faster 
than Watcom C++ (at the time the fastest DOS compiler) did do.

If i can program 1 full week very hard and speedup my chessprogram 0.5% by 
that, then i consider that a very good deal.

If 'decent' in your eyes is a factor 3 slower than the best C compilers, 
then so be it, but no one is going to use that C-compiler in that case.

For a good support of a compiler you most definitely need thousands of 
people.

In case of a console only compiler with support, you'll already pass the 
1000 quite quickly.

Vincent