🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1998Nov18.162305.20468@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu> jdd@cs.toronto.edu (John DiMarco) writes:

>Charles Frank <cfrank@csrlink.net> writes:

>>While working on assembly of a 16 processor Extreme Linux Box I am
>>building, I happened to take a peek at the large pile of Sun ELC's
>>sitting on my shelves collecting dust.  A strange thought crossed my
>>mind.  Could a similar parallel implementation of multiple machines
>>using the ELC's be possible.  I have already removed many of the system
>>boards from these because of bad CRT's.  The compact size of the ELC's
>>system boards and the built in terminal, SCSI, and AUI networking
>>capabilities might make it a practical, albeit relatively slow,
>>solution???  

>Yes, it's entirely possible.  However, the ELCs are rather too slow and
>too limited in memory capacity to be particularly useful in this role.
>To obtain decent aggregate computing power, you need a large number of those
>things, and the small node size and low-speed interconnect makes them
>fairly difficult to use effectively.

I agree. ELC's aren't going to be very suitable for the task

>After all, as Henry Spencer (I think) put it some years back, it's easier to
>get work done with a couple of stout oxen than a few dozen chickens.

8-)

>Still, it might be fun, just for the heck of it, if you can find a suitable
>application for it (e.g. something very highly parallelizable).

Sounds like Steve Ciarcia's Mandelbrot Engine project in the late 1980's. He
build a scalable mandelbrot engine using up to 255 processing modules based
on 8751's.

Regards,

Craig.
-- 
            Sun Ripened Kernels -- http://www.zeta.org.au/~craig/srk
                Surplus and pre-loved Sun Microsystems equipment.
           Based in Waterfall (south-eastern Sydney), NSW, Australia. 
       Operated by Craig Dewick - craig@zeta.org.au - cd@lios.apana.org.au