Chinese supercomputer named world's fastest

In aus.computers Don McKenzie wrote: [...]

These PF records will come and go quickly for the next couple of years. GPU technology makes it possible for anyone with around 1/2 mn to make a PF-scale machine. It only takes some impetus (such as govt pushing some money at you for no reason :) to make it happen.

Just 10 y back a cheap 1 TF machine occupied a whole room. These days a 100 TF machine can sit on your desktop.

In our days, every idiot has a computer more powerful then Cray-2. So what? Yet 40 years ago people used to walk the Moon and build the things like Concorde.

VLV

Rolls-Royce used to make engines that didn't explode...

Em 15/11/2010 21:10, Vladimir Vassilevsky escreveu:

Vladimir:

People _achieved_ a number of times to walk in the moon (but you'll have fingers to spare if you count w/two hands) and only one company engineered the Concorde, a feat which has not been replicated to become drill exercises in any engineering curricula or perceived as low tech that can be done at whim.

But...

It will only work for 6 months, then the BAD CAPS will kick in. Then it will get the Won't Boot Syndrome, or just crash at random Intervals.

ed twice a year, are rated based on speed of

ng on Sunday when a survey ranked one of its

calculations per second, earning it the number

eld the top spot, was ranked second with a

Then next year the US will have the fastest (if they haven't yet gone bankrupt) then it will be China again and so on........... :)

Rolls-Royce also managed (pun intended) to go bankrupt in 1971 when cost of development of 'fuel efficient' turbines development costs overran a 'mere' 100%...

Yes, and in those days we had people and corporations who were prepared to work hard and take risks.

Actually, Concorde was a collaboration of /two/ companies (one British, one French - as impressive a feat of linguistics and diplomacy as of engineering).

Wonder how they managed not mixing feet, pounds and gallons with metres, kilograms and litres :-P

It's no problem - here in the rational world, technical, engineering and scientific measurements are always done in metric. In the UK, imperial measurements are used for rough values (such as "a pint of milk", or "six foot tall"), but metric is used for accuracy or whenever you need to calculate something.

I dunno three fifths of five eighths of SFA is a fairly accurate measurement. Metricate that and you've no idea how much your talking about.

And what kind of measure is an "SFA" supposed to be? Why would anyone particularly need or want three eights of that?

Pardon the metrically biased, but I'm having no idea what you talking about even _before_ metricating it!

The Frogs would not build it unless they were in charge. Notice it is no longer flying.

"SFA" is an abbreviation for "sweet all" (I hope you don't mind the - there may be children or Americans reading here).

Maybe they did it the Canadian way: have bolts with metric heads and imperial threads in an effort to keep everyone happy...

Meindert

h,

Have seen that sort of thing in Australia too. The format of expressing the dimensions are often (say) 3/8" x 20mm

bolts sold in this format are common, especially in those little blister packs at hardware stores.

kreed used his keyboard to write :

That's because the diameter and thread form are an old imperial"standard", Whitworth, whereas the length is in the country accepted measurment standard.

If you buy metric bolts both the lengh and diameter will be metric.

sh,

es,

Yeah, but they won't go into imperial holes. BTW, isn't Whitworth an entirely separate standard from the "standard" imperial standard? I seem to recall that Whitworth was not used much by the time my brother's MGA was made. Looking at Wikipedia they say the thread for mounting cameras to tripods is a Whitworth.

Is Whitworth still used much?

Rick