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Re: MISC-d Digest V97 #28


On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Penio Penev wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> [...]
> If we agrre, that www.TheChipMerchant.com sells ar rock bottom prices, the
> Cyrix 686 150MHz (200+) is  $83, which is is quite a few $10s.

I just bought a 166 K5, which was quite a number of $10. 83$ is perfecly 
allright considering what an F21 is going to cost ($1? $10$ $40? I think 
the latter).

> Let us note here, the Intel discontinued the Pentium and slashed prices on
> the MMX.  The others will heve to follow that sonn, and my feeling is that
> the vanila 686-es are selling out of stock.

Possibly so.

> If we look at something that is going to be around in two ir three months,
> we are looking at:  K6-166-200-233 @ $181/233/400 ; 686MX-166/200 @
> $177/249 ;  

Let's see what M2/K6/Pentium are going to cost in 3 months. Please notice 
that a) I can't still buy an F21 (I've been waiting for them for almost 2 
years now) b) the machine can run a lot of things the F21 can't do.

> Not _exactrly_ a few $10s.
> 
> > last
> > time I looked MuP21 sold for roughly $40. 
> 
> This is to cover the development costs out of the sales of development
> systems.  Do inquire about the price if you want to buy, say 10K MuP21. 

But I don't want to buy 10 k. I'd like to buy let's say 64 F21's, _with_ 
a board, and SRAM. Besides of the fact that I can't buy them, I don't 
think the prices will be that spectacular.

> > Motherboards cost next to
> > nothing, 
> 
> Say, $150 form an MMX mb.  Source -- necxdirect.necx.com:8002

Who does need an MMX? Of what possible use is MMX in sci calculations, 
unless one (oops) intends to do lattice algorithms?

> > and the rest of the components (RAM, HD, etc) are also needed for
> > F21 nodes. 
> 
> I haven't heard of a Pentim running off 640K DRAM.  I've heard of Pentiums
> running off 1M SRAM, though. (I've heard of R10Ks running of 4M SRAM :-) 

I need the RAM. Wide RAM (64 bits). Fast RAM, preferably PB SRAM. RAM 
costs the same for F21 (I hope) as for a PC, and RAM usage is roughly the 
same (code density plays no role in my application).

> > L3/L4 microkernel, a message-passing microkernal with Linux
> > personality fits in 12 kBytes (i.e. in K6's cache). 
> 
> What abut the application and the FP code?  FP data?

Lots of lookups, vast amounts of data (16-64 MBytes), tiny code. I will 
probably even use machine code, hideously ugly as Intel code is.

> > Beowulf nodes don't
> > run X, it is just needed for visualization on one machine.
> 
> True.
> 
> >  There's lots 
> > of MPI scientific software, which can be ported to Beowulf by just one 
> > "make". 
> 
> Do say 'ls -l' at the end to see whether it fits in the primaryc cashe.
> In the secondary?

It depends on the code. Secondary, yes.

> > This code requires good float performance, which F21 can't do.
> 
> May be, may be not.  But certainly 10xF21 will be better than 1xAMD.  And
> about 10 time cheaper, I'd add. 

Let's see, I can get 100 F21's for one AMD (K5? K6? Whatever). Sold.
Where can I get them, preferably without having to develop a host system
from scratch (and also, not having to pay $50 for a meek piece of epoxy
sans other semiconductors). 
 
> > Don't get me wrong, I still go for the F21. But it just doesn't compete 
> > with the Beowulf, a different type of a beast entirely. 
> 
> The _only_ advantage of the Beowulf is that you can say 'make' and produce
> something running on them.  The only. 

I don't see it quite like that.
 
> > (While Beowulfs 
> > offer one order of magnitude better price/performance ratio as sci 
> > supercomputers, a SuperDSP box can top that by another order of 
> > magnitude. 
> 
> In that regard the SuperDSP box is like the F21 -- porting is required.

Yeah, but you can get a QNX and a C compiler -- so porting cannot be 
equaled to writing from scratch. (Fortunately, I don't need an OS for my 
app).
 
> > However, beware of the Merced, which will be a C6x clone, and 
> > run at 0.5-1 GHz).
> 
> Vaporware.

Merced, yes. 'C6x, no. ADSP-2106x, no. F21, yes. 

Ask Analog for ADDS-2106X-EZ-LITE, what you get, and what does it cost. 
(I'm still waiting for a 'C6x EV board TI was musing about some months ago). 
And never, never underestimate Intel.

-- Eugene

> --
> Penio Penev <Penev@pisa.Rockefeller.edu> 1-212-327-7423