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From: cdshaw@watrose.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Re: Caltech's Cosmic Cube
Message-ID: <7268@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 17:57:54 EST
Article-I.D.: watrose.7268
Posted: Mon Feb 11 17:57:54 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 04:55:15 EST
References: <333@oakhill.UUCP> <21294@lanl.ARPA>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 47

> While I agree with most of what this original poster said, I think the
> following is somewhat in error:
>
> > Even if the cube
> > had an array of 64 8086/8087 pairs its power would only be about one tenth
> > that of a CRAY.  (Cost wise though, 600 8086/8087 pairs would only run about
> > 200 grand - substantially cheaper than the CRAY.)
> 
> 
> The cost of such a system would be MUCH hihger in order to make back
> research costs, pay for the labor that assembles the machine (which
> must be a nightmare), as well as the cost of memory (less than several
> million words would be inadequate for a machine of such projected power).
> A way to interface so many processors to memory efficiently has yet to
> be found and would add to the expense of the implementation.  Quoted
> costs of the Hypercube project itself have ignored labor (they get grad
> students and researchers themselves to do it, and their salaries are
> figured seperately), they ignore parts (all of which are being donated
> for the project), and they ignore sales, distribution, etc.  All of which
> would be reuired to make a commercial Hypercube feasible.
> 
> J. Giles

Oh come on...
 64 * $2000 = $128,000 , given a rough guess of the cost of 1 8086/8087
single-board computer with (say) 512 K of memory per board = $2000

The architecture of the Cosmic Cube is such that there is not a common pool
of memory, but that each processor has its own memory and sends messages about
the computation to other machines.

As for labour and parts... the $2000 I mentioned is a price at QUANTITY ONE.
ordering (say) multibus boards of the above configuration in 64's would
cost you only 1/2 or 2/3 the price due to price breaks.

And as for labour costs...
Any idiot can plug cards into a card cage (the wiring for which is TRIVIAL
by comparison to the 18-inch wire that you have to use with ECL (CRAY))
The real difference between the CosCube and a micro with 64 slots is that
the backplane is much more complex, but as I mentioned, not as complex
as the labour in wiring a CRAY.

So, I submit that a cost of $200-300k  per 64-Cube would not be too out to 
lunch at all, since it's really just 64 copies of an IBM PC  !!  ( :-) ) 

				Yours 'til the baloney melts...
					Chris D Shaw