[rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.

[Brian Hechinger]

i'm just gonna cut-n-paste a whole load if stuff here.  like i usually do, the
lazy barstard that i am. :)

> But, maybe you were just being sarcastic.

well, partially anyway. :)

> You do realize that Cray is no longer affiliated with SGI, don't you?
> The Cray division was sold to a company called Tera.  Tera promptly
> changed their name to Cray and merged the two product lines, so the SV1
> came from the Cray purchase, but the MTA came from the Tera side.  I
> think the SX-5 is also from the Tera side, and of course, the T3E and T90
> come from the Cray side.

i did not know this.  of course, i've been too wrapped up in life lately to
really cruise cray info like i used to.  maybe it's time to start spending
some time doing that and see what this Tera/new-Cray company is up to.

> The SV-2, MTA-2, and SuperCluster are from the newly formed company.
> Presumably they tried to integrate the two sides together rather than
> continuing to have two "sides".

which makes sense.  you can spend more money on developing one line of computer
than you can on two lines of computers.

> The problem was in the market, and the fact that since the other CPUs in the
> market are not vector, you'd have to re-write your application software.
> Having the d*mn Japanese gov't force US companies to license their products
> at lowball prices probably didn't help either.

i don't think i believe this.  if you know your going to be doing heavy vector
work, then you probably have already planned to do it on a vector machine.
i think there are enough available publicly (for a charge of course) that you
could easily start doing development before you purchase your hardware. just
my thoughts on the subject.

> Really all they are doing is taking open source stuff, slapping it into a
> big pile of hardware, then figuring out how to make it easier to manage,
> probably fixing a few bugs along the way.

if they do fix bugs then great.  if they make the VM system rule, then great,
if they make it more stable then great, if they make it highly scaleable for
large amounts of CPUs, then great.  but in my not so humble opinion, there are
far better places to start.

> Oh yeah, the cool logo probably helps too. :-)

can't possibly hurt. :)

> You Solaris biggot you :-)

damn straight.  maybe i'm crazy, but i think Solaris is an excellent product.
maybe it doesn't run real well on a sun2/120, but then it isn't designed
to.  :)

> No, really...  hopefully it's adoption by a 'Real Computer (tm)' company
> will help to dispell a little of that 'not quite ready for prime time'-ness
> which seems to plague Tux.

Linux has a bit to go before it is ready for prime-time.  i've used it in the
production anvironment, and i was not overly happy with it.

> What do you expect them to run on a cluster of Alphas?

VMS? :)

-brian