Today's average Core 2 Duo PC versus Cray-2 (1985) supercomputer

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Profile Mahoujin Tsukai
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Message 640395 - Posted: 13 Sep 2007, 17:30:41 UTC

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?

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Message 640405 - Posted: 13 Sep 2007, 17:59:00 UTC - in response to Message 640395.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.
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Message 641691 - Posted: 15 Sep 2007, 7:26:32 UTC - in response to Message 640405.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.


I remember the Cray machine at Los Alamos Labs in the late 70 and early 80 time frame, with instruction times in the low pico second range. It used a couple of CDC 7600 as file server systems. Long time ago now.
When we finally figure it all out, all the rules will change and we can start all over again.
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Profile Mahoujin Tsukai
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Message 642270 - Posted: 16 Sep 2007, 12:27:14 UTC - in response to Message 640405.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.

Where did you get the program to measure your PC's MIPS & GFlops? I'm looking for it too. And can it be run on Windows 98?

From the GFlops & MIPS figures you mentioned, it took about 20 years for the processing power of a 1985 supercomputer to make it to the desktop. Similarly, I read that a classic Pentium (no MMX) system of the mid-90s had the processing power of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer.

Computers have come a long way.

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.
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Profile Carlos
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Message 642313 - Posted: 16 Sep 2007, 13:45:56 UTC - in response to Message 642270.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.

Where did you get the program to measure your PC's MIPS & GFlops? I'm looking for it too. And can it be run on Windows 98?

From the GFlops & MIPS figures you mentioned, it took about 20 years for the processing power of a 1985 supercomputer to make it to the desktop. Similarly, I read that a classic Pentium (no MMX) system of the mid-90s had the processing power of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer.

Computers have come a long way.

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.


"Who" knows, mabey sooner.

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Message 642321 - Posted: 16 Sep 2007, 13:57:45 UTC - in response to Message 642270.  

Where did you get the program to measure your PC's MIPS & GFlops? I'm looking for it too. And can it be run on Windows 98?

From the GFlops & MIPS figures you mentioned, it took about 20 years for the processing power of a 1985 supercomputer to make it to the desktop. Similarly, I read that a classic Pentium (no MMX) system of the mid-90s had the processing power of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer.

Computers have come a long way.

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.


Didn't measure them specially. Just looked at the Boinc "Computer Summary":

Measured floating point speed 3149.69 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 6971.64 million ops/sec


May not be totally accurate but probably close enough for current purposes.

F.

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Message 644837 - Posted: 20 Sep 2007, 13:43:51 UTC - in response to Message 642321.  

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.


We already do...

Take a look at the latest Cray Machinery, the X3 and X4.

They are built around AMD Opteron Processors... only Cray has made the systems scalable to 120,000+ CPU's. Spec'd out, what are we talking? 240,000+ Cores???

Holy Bat Flaps Bat Man, thats alot of BOINC'ing.

My point is this though, if the standard "supercomputer" is being built on consumer level technology... well gee, welcome to the 22nd Century Buck Rodgers. All they are doing is scaling things up. Basically its distributed computing on the xxx,xxx scale, inside ONE box.

Screw GHz ratings these days...

ITS THE CORE WARS!!!

Im waiting for my 128 core AMD Phenom rite now.
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Message 644864 - Posted: 20 Sep 2007, 15:18:36 UTC - in response to Message 644837.  


My point is this though, if the standard "supercomputer" is being built on consumer level technology... well gee, welcome to the 22nd Century Buck Rodgers. All they are doing is scaling things up. Basically its distributed computing on the xxx,xxx scale, inside ONE box.
While this is nearly true regarding the CPUs, it is not true at all regarding the interconnect communication.

Issuing results on a time scale of days from servers in Berkeley, and only gathering up any conclusions requiring consideration of what went on in more than one result weeks to years later is many orders of magnitude longer latency than are obtained in "one box distributed computing". And it needs to be--not so many problems can readily be broken down into independent chunks which hardly ever need to talk to each other.

The lead of single-processor execution speed in supercomputers vs. consumer desk-top machines has shrunk mightily since 1975, which is bad news for the sort of problem that does not parallelize nicely.

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Message 645052 - Posted: 20 Sep 2007, 20:05:05 UTC - in response to Message 642270.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.

Where did you get the program to measure your PC's MIPS & GFlops? I'm looking for it too. And can it be run on Windows 98?

From the GFlops & MIPS figures you mentioned, it took about 20 years for the processing power of a 1985 supercomputer to make it to the desktop. Similarly, I read that a classic Pentium (no MMX) system of the mid-90s had the processing power of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer.

Computers have come a long way.

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.


Moore's Law will eventually reach a plateau with regards to single-core electron-based technologies. At the very least, the exponential increase will be reduced. Rumor has it that we have already reached a point where the effective heat dissipation cannot keep up with near future processing demands. Then again, we can simply keep combining cores until we run out of case space or heatsinks. Hopefully by then, quantum computers will be out.

Unless the CPU manufacturers continue with Core-type technologies, we might b
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Message 645345 - Posted: 21 Sep 2007, 1:18:15 UTC - in response to Message 645052.  

Can today's average Core 2 Duo PC beat the above supercomputer in terms of GFLOPS & MIPS?



Well, according to what I can find, the US Army reckon the Cray 2 had a peak of 1 GFlop and other (www) sources indicate about 825 MIPS.

My O/C'd E6400 C2D is reported by Boinc as performing at 3.15 GFlops and 6971 MIPS unless I entirely misunderstand the figures (which is entirely possible :)

F.

Where did you get the program to measure your PC's MIPS & GFlops? I'm looking for it too. And can it be run on Windows 98?

From the GFlops & MIPS figures you mentioned, it took about 20 years for the processing power of a 1985 supercomputer to make it to the desktop. Similarly, I read that a classic Pentium (no MMX) system of the mid-90s had the processing power of the 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer.

Computers have come a long way.

If Moore's Law applies over the next two decades, we would have today's supercomputer on our desktops in 2027.


Moore's Law will eventually reach a plateau with regards to single-core electron-based technologies. At the very least, the exponential increase will be reduced. Rumor has it that we have already reached a point where the effective heat dissipation cannot keep up with near future processing demands. Then again, we can simply keep combining cores until we run out of case space or heatsinks. Hopefully by then, quantum computers will be out.

Unless the CPU manufacturers continue with Core-type technologies, we might b

There's odd stuff out there that could change things. One of the more interesting was an idea/HW that IBM patented about 10 years ago. Trinary logic- instead of 1/0, you have 1/0/-1. Basically a lot more horsepower with the same amount of HW, but the logic is a mess, not to mention problems connecting it to the real world.

Boinc Button Abuser In Training >My Shrubbers<
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Message boards : Number crunching : Today's average Core 2 Duo PC versus Cray-2 (1985) supercomputer


 
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