zz,bwf: CRANKING UP SUPERMACHINES-- will these run Beowulf?

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

SUPERCOMPUTER RUNS ON CELL PHONE CHIPS
Researchers at Columbia University are building supercomputers that run on
digital signal processors -- the same chips that run cellular telephones.
DSPs can be wired together for maximum computing power, just like
microprocessors, but are much less expensive.  One Columbia-designed system
uses more than 12,000 DSP chips to perform 600 billion calculations per
second at a total cost of $1.85 million.  Conventional supercomputers using
Intel microprocessors can perform 1 trillion to 2 trillion calculations per
second, but cost tens of millions of dollars.  "From the point of view of a
person writing code, it's pretty similar to programming a
microprocessor-based machine," says Norman Christ, a physics professor at
Columbia.  (Wall Street Journal 3 Dec 98)


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Edupage, 3 December 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about
information technology, is provided three times a week as a service
of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to
transforming higher education through information technologies.
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Theodor Holm Nelson, Visiting Professor of Environmental Information
 Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Fujisawa, Japan
 Home Fax from USA: 011-81-466-46-7368  (If in Japan, 0466-46-7368)
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/  (Professorial page)
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Quotation of the day, 98.12.03:
"The press is a peculiar, disembodied, melancholy creature driven by
strange hungers, never happy with its triumphs, wanting always to be loved,
and incessantly suspecting that it is not.  In this, of couse, it closely
resembles the politician."
Alexander M. Haig, Jr., *Caveat*, p. 17.