[geeks] New Itanium machines from SGI

[Chris Byrne]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org 
> [mailto:geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org] On Behalf Of Dan Sikorski
> 
> The one thing about this whole system that you describe that 
> sticks out
> in my mind is that it seems the EXACT OPPOSITE of where PC's 
> are headed
> now.  

<snip>

> 
> What you're talking about is decentralization, when the PC industry
> continues to move more towards centralization.  Because in their mind,
> they have a fast processor, what else do they need?
> 


Yep, and they'll continue to head that way as long as CPU performance
economically scales up. But what happens when it slows down or stops?
What happens when there are no more cycles to eke out of a processor, no
matter what architecture, fab process, or level of cooling. As we said
earlier for silicon that level is somewhere between 4 and 6 GHz, which
at historical acceleration rates is less than two years away.

We cant do any of the nifty clock doubling technicques because that's a
materials limit. Anything faster and you get electromigration and
crosstalk. Also there may be things like quantum flux, cosmic ray
interference, etc... Which at that scale and speed would effect systems
far more than they do currently. 

So what exactly do we do. We've gone as far as we can go vertically, now
its time to go horizontally. 

Chris Byrne