Chip Wars
The researchers point to the history of less expensive chips bumping out faster but higher-priced processors in high-performance systems. In 1993, the list of the world's fastest supercomputers, known as the Top500, was dominated by systems based on vector processors. They were nudged out by less expensive RISC processors like IBM's Power chip, whose use in supercomputers peaked early in the past decade. The RISC chips in turn were eventually replaced by cheaper commodity processors like Intel's Xeon and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron, which today are used in more than 400 supercomputers on the Top500 list.
The transitions had a common thread, the researchers wrote: Microprocessors killed the vector supercomputers because they were "significantly cheaper and greener," they said.
"Mobile processors are not faster ... but they are significantly cheaper," the researchers wrote.
The researchers point to the history of less expensive chips bumping out faster but higher-priced processors in high-performance systems. In 1993, the list of the world's fastest supercomputers, known as the Top500, was dominated by systems based on vector processors. They were nudged out by less expensive RISC processors like IBM's Power chip, whose use in supercomputers peaked early in the past decade. The RISC chips in turn were eventually replaced by cheaper commodity processors like Intel's Xeon and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron, which today are used in more than 400 supercomputers on the Top500 list.
The transitions had a common thread, the researchers wrote: Microprocessors killed the vector supercomputers because they were "significantly cheaper and greener," they said.
"Mobile processors are not faster ... but they are significantly cheaper," the researchers wrote.
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