Subject: Re: CCL:estimate FP operations in Comp Chem (summary)

From: David Konerding <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 12:09:29 -0700

Steve Williams writes:
>I apologize to those select ccl readers who have been waiting for this
>summary with bated breath; it is late but it is here:
>
>> 
>> As an example, a 1 teraflop machine, running for 5 years, nonstop, will
>> have done something on the order of 1E20 floating point operations, or
>> about 1/6000 of a mole.  
>> 
>
>i suspect it may be several moles, and following conventional
>wisdom on the rate of progress of computer hardware, as much
>will be computed in the next 2 years as in all of history before.
>the new super computers are almost scarry, a cray T3E maxed
>out can do over 2.4 GIGAflops/s!  is there anything that won't be
>calculable soon?  see:
><http://www.sgi.com/t3e/tech_info.html>
>i'd be fascinating if anyone has any pricing info on these systems,
>or other current crays, they are currently producing 4 product lines.
>it's simply fascinating.  The available processing power should
>continue to double every 2 years.

Yes, there's a lot that's incalculable today and will be so for the
forseeable future.  For example, calculating the full quantum equation
for the entire universe, or just brute-force cracking 1024-bit encryption,
would take you far longer than the life of the whole universe, and would
require more energy than the universe has to offer you.

Furthermore, you should be aware that the T3E is basically an obsolete
machine and that very few people actually buy them!!  It's a (in short)
cluster of 600MHz alphas with point 650MB/s interconnect.  A few years ago,
that was hot stuff, but it's not anymore.  Plenty of companies will sell
you interconnect that is that fast, and the alphas coming down the pipe are
pretty durn impressive (specFP95 of 85+).  

Dave