Re: 1teraflops cell processor possible?

> Not only am I convinced that the point the statement (which is a bit
> of hyperbole) is trying to make essentially true, but I believe that
> the reality it is summarizing is going to dominate the future of
> high-peformance computation.

Why "the future" - where, do you think, went the money in designing
and building a Cray-2, say?

> In a streaming architecture, you fetch data from somewhere, you do
> something with it, you do something else with it, you do something
> else with it, you do something else with it, ad nauseum, until you
> have absolutely run out of operations you can stream together.
> *Then*, and with great reluctance, you bear the cost of putting the
> data where you will need to bear the cost of fetching it again.

And I thought that was the whole point of optimizing compilers that do
blocking and interprocedural analysis...?

> The people who make the budget decisions in
> Washington are trying to get supercomputing back on track by paying
> people to build big machines.  That's not an indefensible exercise.  I
> just wish they would put more money into moving us away from a
> computer architecture that is showing its age and its limitations.
> Too much money is going into sheer size and not enough into finding
> new ways of doing business.

The problem will be that you will need both to be successful in this
endeavour: you need a solution scaleable to sufficient size. Building
small proof-of-principle demonstrators doesn't cut it.

> At one time, IBM was able to take great risks of its own in pursuing
> fundamental research.  It no longer can, and I don't expect it to.

IBM no longer does - have the closed the Zurich lab, Almaden, San Jose,
...?

        Jan