Anyone want a Cray - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

18 Feb 1998

At 08:56 PM 2/17/98 -0500, you wrote:
...
   Well, I
personally doubt anyone will actually pay that amount since you
 could get similar computing power from a contemporary PC for a fraction of
 that price 
Umm, really...

Even a low end EL would waste a hotshot PeeCee in a real world number
crunch contest. A Pentium II (or Alpha, or UltraSPARC II) just can not
keep up a good, sustained vector flow like a Cray. Getting a decent 100
Mflops is very hard to do on a desktop system today, but not for a ca.
1976 Cray-1. If this Cray for sale is a decent Y/MP type, it could
probably sustain many hundreds of Mflops, perhaps into a Gflop.

And then there is the issue of the memory bandwidth... 
	Seems to me I recall reading a bit of folklore where someone at Apple told
Cray that they had used their new Cray to help design their new Apple and
Cray replied that they had used an Apple to help design the Cray.

							Cheers

							Charlie Fox

PS... Sam, did you get your copy of the videotape?
...