Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 15 May 1997 13:18:16 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Josef Grosch <jgrosch@superior.mooseriver.com>
To:        terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Cluster Computing in BSD
Message-ID:  <199705152018.NAA20638@superior.mooseriver.com>
In-Reply-To: <199705151725.KAA15126@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "May 15, 97 10:25:37 am"

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert said:
>> > computers, but I can live with it :-). (With six boxes, a common
>> > scientific process could take nearly 1/6 of the time on a fast network).
>>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> 
>> The difference between "could" and "does" is the
>> reason for the failure of (nearly) every business unit that sold
>> highly parallel/cluster systems.
>
>Except Goodyear.  And Thinking Machines Corp.  And Cray Computing.
>And Cray Research.  And Fujitsu.  And...
>
>I think the list of successes so vastly outnumbers the list of
>failures that your parenthetical "nearly" is *way* out of place
>here.
>
>

I am going to have to disagree with you here, Terry. While the above
mentioned companys produced, in their time, insanely great machines (say
the words "Cray XMP" to a fluid dynamics person such as my father and watch
them drool) as a profit making company they have not fared as well
post-cold war as they did during the Reagan buildup.

Thinking Machines is out of business. Cray Computing lost money and was
bought by SGI, mostly for their software. Cray Research was spun-off by
Seymour Cray to develop the next generation of Crays. The capital to run
Cray Research was raised based on Seymour Cray's reputation as one of the
giants of this industry. With his untimely death this past Winter I would
suspect that Cray Research will be bought up some time this year.   

Fujitsu is another story. Japanese corporations do not have the same set of
fetishes that American corporations have. The business unit that produces
the Fujitsu MMP is most likely losses money like it is going out of style.
*BUT* Fujitsu the corporation has a license to print money. Japanese
corporations do not expect every business unit to turn a profit every
quarter. They are content to allow high visibility business units that
showcase their technical mastery to loose money while the remainder of the
organization does very well. Fujitsu's mainframe division is doing very
well, eating Amdahl's lunch.

I don't know much about the Goodyear machine but I am willing to wager that
the American military and intelligence community helping to underwrite this
division of Goodyear, a corporation that is doing very well without it
computer division.


Just my $0.02


Josef

-- 
Josef Grosch        |   Another day closer to a   |    FreeBSD 2.2.1
jgrosch@sirius.com  |     Micro$oft free world    | UNIX for the masses




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199705152018.NAA20638>