9 Oct
2008
9 Oct
'08
3:37 p.m.
OI I know what supercomputers are used for. The essence of my question is are these things
at all user friendly? What familiar apps COULD be run if I was disposed to want to?
--- On Thu, 10/9/08, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
Subject: Re: NEC SX-4B on Ebay
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008, 2:56 AM
On Oct 8, 2008, at 4:04 PM, Chris M wrote:
silly question...what would a person do with it?
Yes
some people
actually do look for utility in some of their old
clunkers (and
that one isn't that old I reckon). Could
I...surf
the web? Could
I...play some games? Obviously the thing could
emulate
anything on
the planet (I realize that's a possible
response,
so the sky is the
limit). But what are the practical applications
that
this thing
could be set to use from the get-go?
Surf the web or play games? No. Fortunately, I
don't do either
of those things.
The SX-4B, like most supercomputers, is a math machine.
It is
very good at many types of tasks that are mathematically
intensive.
Image processing, fluid mechanics, weather simulation,
cryptography,
etc. There's a lot more to computers than such trivial
wastes of
time as surfing the web and playing games. ;)
As many here know, I have a few Cray supercomputers.
Like the
SX-4B, they are math machines. As a specific example, I
bought my
first Cray system for about $12,000.00. I used that
machine to
develop and test image processing algorithms for a digital
video
surveillance system that I built. I made back that
$12,000.00 on the
first sale of that system. This SX-4B is quite a bit
faster than
that particular Cray.
To be fair, I could've done that image processing
work on my (very
fast) SGI desktop workstation instead of the Cray, but each
test run
would've taken days rather than hours, and I'm a
very impatient man.
I am currently using another Cray system in a medical
application
that I can't talk about right now. (NDA) It is
mathematically-
intensive and suits the architecture well.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL