World’s top supercomputer from ‘09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled

On Wed, 3 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote: Of course not. I acknowledge and respect your expertise. And, I certainly had no intention of offending you. That's why I was so incredulous and taken aback by your OFF THE WALL statements! (YOU were the one who made those statatements - full post below) I even speculated that my whole perception of such machines was wrong and that things had gone through extraordinary changes that I was unaware of! Thank you Let's hope so, but I am cynical about the prospects. Then WHY DID YOU SAY IT? Those are YOUR statements that you are being offended by! If you had meant them metaphorically, then I'm sorry, but I missed that, and humbly request that in the future, for the sake of those of us less enlightened, that you pepper your metaphors with phrases such as "It is as if", "Similarly to", "by analogy". If you were joking, or being sarcastic, that also did not come across. You COULD HAVE said, "Designing upgradeability imposes some constraints on performance. In "extreme performance", there is a greater need for custom components obviating any possibility of modularity. It is not like an S100 backplane, where components can be interchangeable and upgradeable. Thus, those constraints would be intolerable." -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com Here is the full post that referred to supercomputer CPUs in sockets and daughterboards: ---------------------------- Start --------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:43:43 +0200 From: Pontus <pontus at update.uu.se> Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: [windows-1252] World^Rs top supercomputer from ^Q[windows-1252] 09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled [ The following text is in the "windows-1252" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] On 04/01/2013 02:33 AM, Fred Cisin wrote: and What would you replace? The CPU? Then you need a new socket and then you need a new motherboard. I suppose you could hold it against them that they didn't make the CPU's pin compatible, but that's only viable for a few years. The pin count changes as more and more features are moved onboard the CPU. And I suppose you could hold it against them that they didn't put the CPU on a daughterboard, but then the cost of manufacturing of the daughterboard would probably be close to a whole motherboard. Much easier to throw out and replace and let somebody else worry about assembly. Ram speeds go up, so you want to replace those when you get a new CPU as well. What is left? Power supplies and fans? yeah, those probably have a four more years in them. Probably would make sense to reuse. /P ----------------------- End ----------------------------