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Subject: Re: ASCI White vs. Deep Blue

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 21:47:43 09/24/01

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On September 24, 2001 at 23:31:42, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>
>Have fun running on a 375Mhz processor.
>
>You're arguing like those Macintosh guys who praise their G4.
>
>Well my sister has a g4 at 450Mhz. and it's dual.
>
>Happy for my sister, she's btw a graphics designer and the only
>reason she has macintosh is because she can't work with windows (yet).
>
>I ship to apple/motorola a few questions regarding things of the cpu.
>
>Simple questions. Still today i have no answer back from them!


Vincent, the way you ask questions, it is no wonder they wouldn't
answer.  IE "question:  why do you have such a stupid small branch target
buffer?"  Who would take the time to answer such?





>
>Same will happen with the processors you described.
>
>I mean a 375Mhz processor. How for christ sake is it going to beat
>*ever* a 1.4Ghz MP processor or a 2.0Ghz P4 processor?
>
>Bandwidth, Que? I thought we talked about how fast a chessprogram
>runs on it. Not on whether meteorologists are happy as i can answer
>that already. Meteorologists aren't happy right now as it's raining
>and thundering here!


Just try them first.  A lot of slow processors will fry a pair of very
fast ones, every single time.





>
>>argue "but it can't do that."  Just like you argued for months about the
>>speedup numbers in Cray Blitz even though I showed you the raw output.  "It
>
>what i say now is that the speedup you get at cray blitz at 8 processors
>is 6.6, and that on a cluster with 8 nodes you'll never get close to that,
>not even close to 4.0 that's what i think, because at the cray blitz
>you had shared memory, here you do not have shared memory!
>
>So our old bet still stands!


Any bet you'd like that says < 4.0 out of 8 is money in my bank...  give me
time...



>
>Actually i think it's going to be pretty hard to get a better than
>squareroot speedup first at 8 nodes. sqrt 8 = 2.83
>
>Note i wasn't complaining about cray blitz but about APHID being a
>not realistic thing because its numbers are based upon 8 ply searches.

Only the paper _you_ are looking at.  Later aphid results were for Crafty,
which was _not_ just 8 ply searches.  That year crafty was doing 12 plies
in Jakarta on a P6/200 machine.



>
>>just can't do that" is a common theme.  But before you launch into that kind of
>>argument, you ought to at _least_ know what you are talking about.  If you
>>haven't run on an SP, nor studied the tech references on it, it makes you look
>>foolish to dismiss it as useless when some _serious_ computer scientists are
>>using these machines daily to solve serious computational problems.  Just
>>because _you_ can't use 'em doesn't mean everyone is so limited.
>
>Yes i laugh for 375Mhz processors now that it's september 2001!
>
>To me making a machine existing out of 375Mhz processors
>it's like next:
>
>You design worlds biggest aircraft (superjumbo)
>and instead of using gigantic engines like jumbo's use,
>you propel the worlds biggest aircrafty using 8192 old
>bicycles like you see in our beloved capital Amsterdam so much.

Ever heard of the man-driven aircraft that crossed the English Channel?
Them bicycle pedals worked just fine.




>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>No they were not slower than a 266Mhz PII would have been for me. And
>>>my code had some things which now would do better at a 64 bits machine
>>>but at that time a bit worse so i considered it equally fast to a PII
>>>at 300Mhz.
>>>
>>>But the PII processsor was already years old at that time, whereas the
>>>brandnew SUN processor was only clocked 300Mhz!!!!!!!!
>>
>>trash.  so what?
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Each workstation (single cpu) was 5 times the price of a PII450 system.
>>>
>>>Of course that PII450 couldn't be put in a 32 processor shared memory
>>>system, which the SUN most likely can be put in.
>>>
>>>The PII450 isn't hot swappable etcetera.
>>>
>>>So if you really want to run an application which has been written for
>>>a cluster, and then can put it at 8192 processors (which will never
>>>be able to get used at the same time i bet. most likely you can at
>>>most allocate 1000 processors or so for a single job).
>>
>>
>>How about adopting a new standard for yourself?  Before you say something,
>>check it out.  "I bet" is not going to win friends and influence people in
>>the world of computing.  "I have shown" is far more convincing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>In that case there is of course a use in having such a cluster.
>>>
>>>But the speedup over a dual 1.4 MP will be most likely not
>>>even close to a factor 1000.
>>>
>>>Factor 100 perhaps?
>>
>>I'll bet that 8K processors can produce a 1000x faster search.  But even
>>if it was only 500 times faster, that will still cook your goose for Sunday.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Pay a programmer a bit and it's a factor 30 perhaps?
>>>
>>>Now if this process runs for a week, then for research institutes there
>>>is of course a big advantage, because you are 30 weeks faster!
>>>
>>>You need 1 week instead of 30.
>>>
>>>Obviously there is a use here to make a huge system, but i would be
>>>pretty amazed if it's getting used like that.
>>>
>>>Most likely 100 scientists kick on that they get 64 processors
>>>from a 8192 processor machine!
>>
>>Your "most likely" is garbage.  Why don't you ask someone at one of the
>>SP2 computer sites?  I know some I will be happy to put you in touch with.
>>Maybe some of the guys up at Oak Ridge will give you _real_ data to erase
>>your bad guesses...
>>
>>Want some names???
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>The only real advantage on this machine is again for the meteorologists,
>>>who can use big memory, bit storage, and big bandwidths.
>>>
>>>But well. They don't need many processors. Just a huge RAM memory!
>>>
>>>The bottom line is that compared to a 1.4Ghz MP, they already need
>>>16 times more processors for each MP you would use!
>>>
>>>If a scientist allocates 32 processors with an application that's only
>>>needing processor power, then a dual 1.4 will be faster for them!
>>>
>>>If they need its bandwidth, why then create a machine with so many
>>>processors?
>>
>>
>>You are getting to the issue.  Maybe because they _need_ that much computational
>>power.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>>Still probably optimistic number of nodes a second.
>>>>>So at 8192 processors, from which you can perhaps use a 1000 at a time,
>>>>>I would get 15M nodes a second.
>>>
>>>>>Now that looks great, but that's of course on a CLUSTER. Speedup perhaps
>>>>>10%. 1.5M nodes a second effectively, but the bigger the depth the less
>>>>>the speedup gets as the branching factor will be worse, unless i accept
>>>>>that the thing first slows down at each processor (which is a likely
>>>>>approach) and pray that the latency is more than fast at this thing.
>>>>>
>>>>>So you sure outsearch deep blue by many plies, but not if a new deep
>>>>>blue would be pressed on a chip using nullmove and DDR-RAM at it.
>>>>>
>>>>>So you are not faster in NPS, but search improvements would let it
>>>>>search deeper. that still wouldn't make my DIEP faster on this machine
>>>>>than DB was in nodes a second.
>>>>>
>>>>>Of course DBs focus upon only getting the maximum number of NPS (that's
>>>>>how they advertised the thing. search depths have no commercial value)
>>>>>sure made it faster than what i would get on this machine.
>>>>>
>>>>>>Is this really so for those in the know with hardware and these types of
>>>>>>machines?



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