[Beowulf] Exascale by the end of the year?

[Prentice Bisbal]

On 03/04/2014 09:52 PM, Joe Landman wrote:
> On 03/04/2014 09:04 PM, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
>> I find this whole thing dubious as well, but there is a LOT of money
>> being made by high-frequency traders. Enough that a $50 billion
>> expenditure could probably be made back in a few years. I don't know any
>
> Not quite.
>
>> exact numbers that these HFTers are bringing in (many of them are super
>> secretive), but it's definitely billions in profit per year.  As someone
>> who lives and works in the NYC metro area, I've seen how much money some
>> of these big investment banks have, and the HFTs are bringing in money
>> faster than anyone else right now, so $50 billion isn't outside the
>> realm of possibility. If anyone can do this that's not a government, I
>> would expect it to be someone in the  HFT world.
>
> Actually, those doing HFT are in an arms race working on ever smaller 
> margins, against competitors with similar hardware, and "similar" 
> algorithms.
>
> I don't know where the conception that they are rolling in cash came 
> from, but I could probably guess.

Please guess, I'd like to hear you're opinion, and I'd like to hear why 
I'm completely misguided.

>
> I think the real question is would the system be viable in a 
> commercial sense, or is this another boondoggle?
>
> I'd like to see  us get to meaningful and usable exaflop.  I am 
> definitely a speed demon at heart.  But I also want to see us get 
> there in such a way that we can build more than one, and not have it 
> cost $50B/unit, or $1B/year to operate.
>
> I read the Nicole's article on it, but it was somewhat short on 
> details.  So I'll remain a skeptic for now.  Though we'd be happy to 
> supply them the fastest exabyte of disk they can get on the planet ... :D
>
>
>