[Beowulf] Clusters just got more important - AMD's roadmap

[Mark Hahn]

> http://www.anandtech.com/show/5503/understanding-amds-roadmap-new-
> direction/2
>
> AMD's new roadmap basically says they stop high performance CPU
> development.

well, they won't pursue P4-netburst-ish damn-the-torpedoes style
"high" _desktop_ performance.  their server roadmap is pretty solid, 
though they've dropped the 10/20c chips.  (which might not have made 
sense in terms of power envelope.  or, for that matter, the fact that 
even cache-friendly code probably wants more than 2 memory channels 
for 10 cores...)

I think AMD is absolutely right: the market is for mobile devices,
for power-efficient servers, and for media-intensive desktops.

> GPU line will continue
> also inside cpu's integrated. Total monopoly for intel for
> applications needing CPU's as it seems.

you seem to have missed AMD's main point, which HSA: the concept of 
pushing x86 and GPU together to enable something higher-performing.
it's not a crazy idea, though pretty ambitious.

> That might that companies that need some more CPU crunching no longer
> can build cheap 4 socket

4s is still on the roadmap; I don't see why you'd expect it to disappear.
it costs them very little to support, and does serve a modest market.

> So this means that clustering is only cheap choice then.

clustering has always been the cheap solution.  hence this list!