[Coco] $1,000 supercomputer

[John Donaldson]

Since it does not have a fixed instruction set, I bet Bill Gates and 
Company does not have a
version of XP for it.

John Donaldson



Bootstrap Bill wrote:

>The following was published in 1999. It claims that we could have a $1,000
>computer capable of processing 100 billion instructions per second within 18
>months. It's been over five years and still no word from the company. Has
>anyone heard anything about this? I want one!
>
>
>http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9906/15/supercomp.idg/index.html
>
>
>A $1000 supercomputer?
>
>June 15, 1999
>Web posted at: 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT)
>
>by Mark Brownstein
>
>(IDG) -- Within 18 months, you may be able to put the equivalent of today's
>supercomputer on your desktop--for about $1000. The CPU, long the heart of
>all PCs, may be an unnecessary component in tomorrow's high-performance
>computers.
>
>
>The new computer will be able to process 100 billion instructions per
>second, according to Kent Gilson, chief technical officer of Star Bridge
>Systems. Company representatives discussed their plans for a high-end PC
>this week while announcing HAL-300GrW1, a "hypercomputer" that is said to be
>60,000 times as fast as a 350-MHz Pentium, and many times as fast as IBM's
>supercomputer Pacific Blue. (The test used to measure the HAL's performance
>was different from the measure used for Pacific Blue, so exact comparisons
>are difficult.)
>
>The new $1000 computer will be "three orders of magnitude different in
>price-performance [ratio]" from today's PCs, Gilson claims. It will fill
>many of the roles of a supercomputer, such as voice recognition, natural
>language processing, and holographic displays, he says. What's more, Gilson
>says, this super-PC will "run PC applications in emulation mode, in a manner
>similar to how the DEC Alpha runs NT, but it will run it a lot faster."
>
>HAL comes first
>
>Although Gilson claims the hardware for such a PC is ready now, and that
>Star Bridge Systems has completed the programming language, called Viva, the
>company's initial focus is on its high-end hypercomputer line, HAL. The
>HAL-300GrW1 has a price tag of about $26 million, so it doesn't take a
>hypercomputer to understand why Star Bridge Systems has chosen to direct its
>attention to the HAL line first.
>
>"We're a small company. If we came out with a PC, we wouldn't be able to
>sell enough [to fund the company], but we can sell hundreds a year of the
>high-end ones, so it just makes sense," Gilson says.
>
>In today's computing terms, the architecture Star Bridge Systems has
>developed is a "massively parallel, ultratightly coupled, asymmetrical
>multiprocessor." It is based on a processor called a field programmable gate
>array, Gilson says. FPGAs can be programmed on the fly, so their
>configuration can be changed to perform the particular task at hand most
>efficiently.
>
>FPGAs can be changed thousands of times per second. So in essence, an FPGA
>can become a specially designed CPU tailored to perform a required task
>right when you need the new processing architecture.
>
>The traditional CPU, by contrast, has a fixed instruction set that is burnt
>into silicon. Programming instructions are written to work with the
>instruction set, and are limited by the capabilities built into it.
>
>Suitcase supercomputer
>
>Star Bridge Systems had sold one HAL computer upon the line's announcement.
>For one sales pitch, Gilson showed off what he calls a "HAL Junior"--a model
>that fits into a suitcase but delivers 640 billion instructions per second.
>
>The company has mapped out a series of hypercomputer systems, ranging in
>performance from the HAL-10GrW1, capable of conducting 10 billion
>floating-point operations per second, to a HAL-100TrW1, which conducts 100
>trillion floating point operations per second. The company is also selling
>signal-processing products (switches and routers) based on its HAL
>technology. These network products are designed for scientific
>supercomputing and extremely high-demand telecommunications.
>
>Meanwhile, Star Bridge Systems representatives are speaking with major
>companies that have expressed interest in HAL, and that undoubtedly wonder
>whether the system can deliver the performance promised. Initial targets are
>those currently using supercomputers, and those who might see this as a
>higher-performance, lower-cost supercomputer.
>
>"Eventually, reconfigurable computing [a term coined by Gilson, referring to
>the underlying technology behind the hypercomputer] will permeate all
>information systems, just because it's faster, cheaper, and better," Gilson
>predicts.
>
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