Author: Will Singleton
Date: 13:30:21 12/15/99
Go up one level in this thread
On December 15, 1999 at 15:06:56, Greg Lindahl wrote: >On December 15, 1999 at 14:51:13, Will Singleton wrote: > >>I'm pretty clueless too. What's a cluster guy? How about FPGA? What does >>routing a chip mean? Why are you interested in this? > >I did say send email, but hey, probably a lot of people will have the same >questions, so: > >I design Linux clusters used for supercomputing. They are composed of a big pile >of PCs (x86 or Alphas) connected with a network (ethernet or a gigabit network >such as Myrinet) and software that makes it possible to write message-passing >programs (MPI or PVM) to use all the CPUs in parallel. A typical use for the >systems I design is weather forecasting. > >An FPGA is a programmable chip that, in this case, will sit on a PCI card and >evaulates the strength of a given board quickly. Programming these chips is a >highly specialized activity, and is called "routing". > >Deep Blue was an IBM SP2 (cluster with a gigabit network) and a bunch of ASICs >on expansion cards. An ASIC is like a FPGA except it's not re-programmable. >ASICs are faster than FPGAs, but you have to make them in large quantities to >make them cheap. Today's FPGAs are faster than the ASICs used in Deep Blue. > >I'm interested in this for the publicity, just like IBM. > >-- greg Thanks for the explanation. It's certainly relevant here, and I'm sure many people are interested. And it sounds like you might not be a nut, which was another reason for the query. However, the publicity should probably be minimal, given the fact that Deep Blue has already climbed the mountain. Some perhaps. But I see such a project as more of a scientific investigation into a narrow field, without the prospect of return. If that's what you want, ok then. Will
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.