Computer clues to Pentagon attack...

[iGav]

Very interesting......... especially when you consider this..

"Creating just one-tenth of a second of the simulation took about 95 hours of computation time on a supercomputer."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2255459.stm

[irmongoose]

Originally posted by iGAV
"Creating just one-tenth of a second of the simulation took about 95 hours of computation time on a supercomputer."

(The part of the article that BBC left out...)

They were using a Dell workstation, running Pentium 10000 GHz, with 8 billion Gigabytes of RAM.

A few days after they finished the simulation, they ran the whole process again on a Apple Power Mac G4 system, just for the sake of it. The researchers were astonished to see that the Power Mac G4 finished the process in a matter of a few hours. They were even more surprised when they learnt that the Power Mac G4 was running at a mere 1.2 GHz, with only 512 MB of RAM. Moreover, the researchers almost fainted when they learnt that the Dell workstation had cost the U.S. government approximately $ 98 billion, while a student lab assistant had bought the Power Mac G4 for $4000.

The next day, the researchers quit the University and joined a special research group at Apple Computer concerning "The Megahertz Myth".




irmongoose

P.S. I need to go to bed.....

[iGav]

Originally posted by irmongoose


(The part of the article that BBC left out...)

They were using a Dell workstation, running Pentium 10000 GHz, with 8 billion Gigabytes of RAM.

A few days after they finished the simulation, they ran the whole process again on a Apple Power Mac G4 system, just for the sake of it. The researchers were astonished to see that the Power Mac G4 finished the process in a matter of a few hours. They were even more surprised when they learnt that the Power Mac G4 was running at a mere 1.2 GHz, with only 512 MB of RAM. Moreover, the researchers almost fainted when they learnt that the Dell workstation had cost the U.S. government approximately $ 98 billion, while a student lab assistant had bought the Power Mac G4 for $4000.

The next day, the researchers quit the University and joined a special research group at Apple Computer concerning "The Megahertz Myth".




irmongoose

P.S. I need to go to bed.....

:p :p :p

Pleasant dreams irmongoose....

[edesignuk]

Originally posted by irmongoose
P.S. I need to go to bed.....
No need for bed, I think your already dreaming! :D

[Mr. Anderson]

wow, that's a lot of data crunching - but what they don't tell you is how many steps/frames where in that 1/10 sec. We do tons of simulations and analysis of physical experiments and our times are measured anywhere from micro to milli seconds. So there could have been 1000s of frames in the simulation.

Makes me want a faster machine though - even for my animations I can spend 100 hours for a few minutes of animation.

D