From owner-freebsd-hackers  Thu May 15 11:53:44 1997
Return-Path: <owner-hackers>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA07350
          for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 15 May 1997 11:53:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sumatra.americantv.com (sumatra.americantv.com [199.184.181.250])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA07344
          for <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>; Thu, 15 May 1997 11:53:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from right.PCS (right.pcs [148.105.10.31])
	by sumatra.americantv.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA12259;
	Thu, 15 May 1997 14:03:20 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (jlemon@localhost) by right.PCS (8.6.13/8.6.4) id NAA11207; Thu, 15 May 1997 13:46:27 -0500
Message-ID: <19970515134626.58267@right.PCS>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 13:46:26 -0500
From: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>
To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com>, pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co,
        fenyo@email.enst.fr, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Cluster Computing in BSD
References: <199705151553.IAA22312@conceptual.com> <199705151725.KAA15126@phaeton.artisoft.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.61.1
In-Reply-To: <199705151725.KAA15126@phaeton.artisoft.com>; from Terry Lambert on May 05, 1997 at 10:25:37AM -0700
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

On May 05, 1997 at 10:25:37AM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > > computers, but I can live with it :-). (With six boxes, a common
> > > scientific process could take nearly 1/6 of the time on a fast network).
> >                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > 
> > The difference between "could" and "does" is the
> > reason for the failure of (nearly) every business unit that sold
> > highly parallel/cluster systems.
> 
> Except Goodyear.  And Thinking Machines Corp.  And Cray Computing.
> And Cray Research.  And Fujitsu.  And...
> 
> I think the list of successes so vastly outnumbers the list of
> failures that your parenthetical "nearly" is *way* out of place
> here.

Hmm... let's see failures:

    Denelcor
    Kendall Square Research
    Multiflow
    Cydrome
    CDC
    Convex		(aborbed by HP)
    Burroughs Scientific
    Scientific Computer Systems
    Floating Point Systems
    Supertek		(bought out by Cray Research)
    Alliant
    Myrias
    Tera		(okay, so not dead, but not producing anything)
    ...etc
    
This doesn't include companies that attempted to sell parallel computers,
but eventually shut that division down, eg: Evans and Sutherland, BBN,
and others.
       
Cray Research is effectively gone, having been absorbed by SGI, right?
I'd say that Thinking Machines is on it's way out as well; the CM-5 is 
obsolete, and I don't see a replacement on it's way.  Goodyear isn't 
still building MPP's either, AFAIK.

That's not a long list of sucesses.
--
Jonathan