🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov13.152301.20527@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, clc5q@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Clark L. Coleman) writes:
|> 
|> "Five years from now, we should be at 100 billion gigaFLOPS.  A problem that
|> takes three months to do now, we want to do in a day."  
|> -- Steve Chen, Time magazine article, March 28, 1988, page 58.
|> 
|> 100 billion gigaFLOPS is 100 million teraFLOPS, which sounds very fast to
|> me.  "Five years from now" is coming up in a few months.  100 billion GFLOPS
|> sounds ambitious.

It is safe to assume that Time magazine got confused by the billions of
gigaflops. I don't think Chen said that, in the interview. Presumably he
said 100 gigaflops and then had to explain to the reporter what that meant.
And the reporter, to make the point clear, converted it to "100 billion
gigaflops".
100 GFlops for 1993 is about right, by the way.

|> I also noted in this issue that the Cray-3 was "due to be released in 1989."

In this case, whatever Chen actually said, he was wrong.

Daan Sandee                                           sandee@think.com
Thinking Machines Corporation
Cambridge, Mass 02142                                 (617) 234-5044

In <1e0l5aINNc40@early-bird.think.com> sandee@Think.COM (Daan Sandee) writes:

>|> I also noted in this issue that the Cray-3 was "due to be released in 1989."

>In this case, whatever Chen actually said, he was wrong.

And so were a lot of other people.  As early as 1985, the industry was
making plans based on this assumption, which presumably originated at
Cray.

Chen's only mistake was believing it.
--
Paul Barnett             Internet: barnett@convex.com
Convex Computer Corp.      Office: 214-497-4846
Richardson, TX        Mobile/Home: 214-236-8438

In article <1992Nov13.152301.20527@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, clc5q@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Clark L. Coleman) writes:
|> 
|> "Five years from now, we should be at 100 billion gigaFLOPS.  A problem that
|> takes three months to do now, we want to do in a day."  
|> -- Steve Chen, Time magazine article, March 28, 1988, page 58.
|> 
|> I also noted in this issue that the Cray-3 was "due to be released in 1989."
|> 
|> 100 billion gigaFLOPS is 100 million teraFLOPS, which sounds very fast to
|> me.  "Five years from now" is coming up in a few months.  100 billion GFLOPS
|> sounds ambitious.
|> 
|> -- 
|> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
|> "It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once." David Hume
|> |||  clc5q@virginia.edu (Clark L. Coleman)
I think Steve Chen should concentrate on getting his system to run before he
starts benchmarking it.

Sam