Microcontrollers/ASICs v. General Purpose Microprocessors -- WAS: Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 00:08 -0500, Mark Hahn wrote:
> oranges are easier to peel than apples.  what was the question?
> 10GE is a different category of thing than HT.

Exactly!  ;->

> myri 10G does.

I'm sorry, I meant 802.3 layer-2, not layer-2 in general (which is
abstract).

> you have some weird ideas of what Beowulf is.

Apparently, because I'm used to using it to distribute apps that scale
linearly because they are CPU bound, not I/O bound.

> are you trying to spell "InfiniPath"?

Actually, I meant InfiniBand technology (I guess I just finished a DNS
discussion on another list -- DOH!), including all instances of it.

> afaikt you're claiming that beowulf is low-bandwidth.  that's just weird!

Sigh.  I meant it's _lower_ than having a direct HyperTransport
interconnect between CPUs -- or some other, scalable interconnect.

Beowulf is about cost versus such solutions when you need CPU more than
I/O -- or at least at a much lower rate than local interconnects.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------
Some things (or athletes) money can't buy.
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