Re: MISC-d Digest V97 #28
On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Penio Penev wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> [...]
> If we agrre, that www.TheChipMerchant.com sells ar rock bottom prices, the
> Cyrix 686 150MHz (200+) is $83, which is is quite a few $10s.
I just bought a 166 K5, which was quite a number of $10. 83$ is perfecly
allright considering what an F21 is going to cost ($1? $10$ $40? I think
the latter).
> Let us note here, the Intel discontinued the Pentium and slashed prices on
> the MMX. The others will heve to follow that sonn, and my feeling is that
> the vanila 686-es are selling out of stock.
Possibly so.
> If we look at something that is going to be around in two ir three months,
> we are looking at: K6-166-200-233 @ $181/233/400 ; 686MX-166/200 @
> $177/249 ;
Let's see what M2/K6/Pentium are going to cost in 3 months. Please notice
that a) I can't still buy an F21 (I've been waiting for them for almost 2
years now) b) the machine can run a lot of things the F21 can't do.
> Not _exactrly_ a few $10s.
>
> > last
> > time I looked MuP21 sold for roughly $40.
>
> This is to cover the development costs out of the sales of development
> systems. Do inquire about the price if you want to buy, say 10K MuP21.
But I don't want to buy 10 k. I'd like to buy let's say 64 F21's, _with_
a board, and SRAM. Besides of the fact that I can't buy them, I don't
think the prices will be that spectacular.
> > Motherboards cost next to
> > nothing,
>
> Say, $150 form an MMX mb. Source -- necxdirect.necx.com:8002
Who does need an MMX? Of what possible use is MMX in sci calculations,
unless one (oops) intends to do lattice algorithms?
> > and the rest of the components (RAM, HD, etc) are also needed for
> > F21 nodes.
>
> I haven't heard of a Pentim running off 640K DRAM. I've heard of Pentiums
> running off 1M SRAM, though. (I've heard of R10Ks running of 4M SRAM :-)
I need the RAM. Wide RAM (64 bits). Fast RAM, preferably PB SRAM. RAM
costs the same for F21 (I hope) as for a PC, and RAM usage is roughly the
same (code density plays no role in my application).
> > L3/L4 microkernel, a message-passing microkernal with Linux
> > personality fits in 12 kBytes (i.e. in K6's cache).
>
> What abut the application and the FP code? FP data?
Lots of lookups, vast amounts of data (16-64 MBytes), tiny code. I will
probably even use machine code, hideously ugly as Intel code is.
> > Beowulf nodes don't
> > run X, it is just needed for visualization on one machine.
>
> True.
>
> > There's lots
> > of MPI scientific software, which can be ported to Beowulf by just one
> > "make".
>
> Do say 'ls -l' at the end to see whether it fits in the primaryc cashe.
> In the secondary?
It depends on the code. Secondary, yes.
> > This code requires good float performance, which F21 can't do.
>
> May be, may be not. But certainly 10xF21 will be better than 1xAMD. And
> about 10 time cheaper, I'd add.
Let's see, I can get 100 F21's for one AMD (K5? K6? Whatever). Sold.
Where can I get them, preferably without having to develop a host system
from scratch (and also, not having to pay $50 for a meek piece of epoxy
sans other semiconductors).
> > Don't get me wrong, I still go for the F21. But it just doesn't compete
> > with the Beowulf, a different type of a beast entirely.
>
> The _only_ advantage of the Beowulf is that you can say 'make' and produce
> something running on them. The only.
I don't see it quite like that.
> > (While Beowulfs
> > offer one order of magnitude better price/performance ratio as sci
> > supercomputers, a SuperDSP box can top that by another order of
> > magnitude.
>
> In that regard the SuperDSP box is like the F21 -- porting is required.
Yeah, but you can get a QNX and a C compiler -- so porting cannot be
equaled to writing from scratch. (Fortunately, I don't need an OS for my
app).
> > However, beware of the Merced, which will be a C6x clone, and
> > run at 0.5-1 GHz).
>
> Vaporware.
Merced, yes. 'C6x, no. ADSP-2106x, no. F21, yes.
Ask Analog for ADDS-2106X-EZ-LITE, what you get, and what does it cost.
(I'm still waiting for a 'C6x EV board TI was musing about some months ago).
And never, never underestimate Intel.
-- Eugene
> --
> Penio Penev <Penev@pisa.Rockefeller.edu> 1-212-327-7423
