Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Multi-Hydra Computer Feasible in Future?

Author: Slater Wold

Date: 12:26:45 02/15/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 15, 2004 at 15:22:03, Joachim Rang wrote:

>On February 15, 2004 at 15:14:16, Slater Wold wrote:
>
>>On February 15, 2004 at 15:09:57, Bob Durrett wrote:
>>
>>>On February 15, 2004 at 15:06:26, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 15, 2004 at 14:34:08, Bob Durrett wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I envision a standard equipment rack with 32 or 64 Hydra cards, a power supply,
>>>>>possibly a conventional computer for orchestration, and fans.
>>>>
>>>>Do you think Hydra was running on a single computer, with a single card?
>>>
>>>Actually, that is what I thought.  What was actually done?
>>
>>4 Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz PCs & 8 FPGA cards (2 per PC)
>>
>>The PCs are probably $5k a piece.  The cards, about $500 a piece.
>>
>>$25k worth of hardware, just to draw Shredder 8 ($50 program) on a PC.
>>
>>Still think Hydra is the 'engine of the future'?  :)
>>
>
>be fair here: Shredder was running on a Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz, probably 10k

Ack!  I'm not sure about $10k, but it's not an average PC, no.

>and think about the potential for Hydra. Soon we have PCI-Express more bandwidth
>and the FPGAs ware running @ 33 MHz this is easy to tune in contrary to the
>CPU-Clocks.

Talk to anyone who knows anything about FPGAs.  They will never catch the PC, in
terms of price OR performance.

Sure, 8 FPGAs are fast.  But you ever see 8 Opterons going?  :)
(And 8 Opterons would be cheaper!!)

>I don't thin, that Hydra will be a commercial success but I think we might see
>beautiful performance in the near future.

Correct.  Neat idea.  Not going anywhere.

>regards Joachim



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.