[Beowulf] commercial clusters

[Vincent Diepeveen]

My point is that the hardware/dedicated world used to be expensive (even 
when it was dedicated chessmachines), but that software has made things a 
lot cheaper for users, and has given them a lot of options (of course THANKS 
to the progress not only from software but also because of hardware 
progress),  which IMHO is a good thing if you look from it at user 
viewpoint.

If you fail to believe so, then that's up to you of course. Just never look 
in the mirror i'd say.

Vincent

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas Eadline" <deadline at clustermonkey.net>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <diep at xs4all.nl>
Cc: "Angel Dimitrov" <stormlaboratory at yahoo.com>; <beowulf at beowulf.org>; 
"Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>; "Jim Lux" <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters


> Vincent,
>
> I fear I have fallen into a "vincent-hole" in which there exists
> a point at which a discussion-horizon is crossed
> and my ability to understand what you are talking
> about ceases to exist. For me, after crossing this threshold
> the point of the discussion is lost and I enter a state
> of maximum entropy.
>
>
> --
> Doug
>
>
>
>> Some manufacturers exported to 106 countries certain types of machines.
>> This all happened from end 70s to start 90s.
>>
>> Software has total ended all that. What happens now is that some machine
>> sometimes sells in 1 country a 100k units, but that's all lowend 
>> dedicated
>> units.
>>
>> It is no compare. Realize the huge boom of software games when PC's
>> arrived.
>>
>> Right now the big games (other than chess) sell 3-5 million copies a year
>> (50-100 euro a product),
>> and compared to that chess is very tiny. Chessmaster still claims 4
>> million
>> unit sales, but that's over
>> a number of years, not within 1 year.
>>
>> So in that sense releasing a chessproduct is commercially not so
>> interesting.
>> Creating some new game, making a lot of bla bla around it and hope to get
>> one of the games that sell 3-5 million copies a year, is far more
>> interesting.
>>
>> If you compare that with hardware, then those manufacturers still rip off
>> people. That new quad
>> core2 chip is going to release at 999 euro next month and of course is
>> very
>> fast.
>>
>> But just look to the huge price of it as compared to software games.
>>
>> Vincent
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Douglas Eadline" <deadline at eadline.org>
>> To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <diep at xs4all.nl>
>> Cc: "Geoff Jacobs" <gdjacobs at gmail.com>; "Angel Dimitrov"
>> <stormlaboratory at yahoo.com>; <beowulf at beowulf.org>; "Jim Lux"
>> <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov>; "Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:44 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters
>>
>>
>>> >
>>>>> Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>> -- snip --
>>>>
>>>> Well the hard facts is that hundreds of thousands of $3000-$20k
>>>> chesscomputers (dedicated with a 10Mhz chip) have been sold until the
>>>> pc
>>>> was
>>>> faster than the dedicated chesscomputers. A vaste multiple indeed of
>>>> that
>>>> of
>>>> $50-$1000 computers has been sold at the time.
>>>
>>> Are you saying:  At least 100,000 chess computers were sold for an
>>> average of $6000 (US) for a total of $600,000,000 before the PC was
>>> introduced. Almost a billion dollar chess computer market segment.
>>> You are right, that is a hard fact to believe.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Doug
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> Doug
>