[Coco] $1,000 supercomputer

[jdaggett at gate.net]

Bill

Yes they are still in business and they have four models in production. All 
processing is done in FPGAs and are reconfigurable. 

Here is the lowdown on their HC-124 Configurable processor board

HC-124 BOARD SPECIFICATIONS

    * 22 Virtex-II FPGAs/board (~124 million gates)
    * 28 gigabytes DDR SRAM memory
    * Memory bandwidth: 80 gigabytes/sec
    * 72 64-bit parallel memory channels per board
    * 6 megabytes cache memory (bandwidth - 2.5 terabytes/second)
    * 900 gigabits/second inter-chip communications bandwidth on board
    * 4364 inter-chip communications lines
    * 560 external IO lines (280 connected internally; 280 available for external use)
    * 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI-X bus interface (Q1 '04)
    * Power consumption: 300 watts (average), 900 watts (peak)
    * Dimensions: 13 1/8" x 5 1/8" x 2 1/2"
    * Weight: 5 - 5.25 lbs.

I guess with 28 Gigs of DDR ram, one hardly needs a harddisk swap area?

Not bad. But is does't cost under $1000 bucks. 

Here's the link to their site

http://www.starbridgesystems.com/products/hardware.html

james


On 17 Jul 2004 at 11:17, Bootstrap Bill wrote:

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Date sent:      	Sat, 17 Jul 2004 11:17:39 -0700
Subject:        	[Coco] $1,000 supercomputer
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> (my computer froze while posting this. I apologize if it's posted
> twice).
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "It's easy enough to be pleasant, when life hums along like a song.
> But the man worth while is the man who can smile when everything goes
> dead wrong.".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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