On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 18:31:50 PST, "M. Edward Borasky" said:

> about grains of rice on the chessboard any more? :) Please don't make me
> go back to the days when Thomas Watson said there was a world-wide
> market for ten to twelve computers, or when Ken Olsen asked why anyone
> would want a computer in their home!

Ken Olson had his head stuck someplace when he said that.  However, the
Thomas Watson quote *does* need some clarification.  When he said that,
IBM was *already* in the business of selling automated tabulating machinery
with limited computational ability on board, and he was specifically
talking about large multi-10s-of-millions of dollar pricetag machines
(in other words, a supercomputer).

He was right then, and he's right now.  SGI is selling Altix systems - but
I'd be surprised if they can sell more than a half-dozen or so Columbia-scale
configurations.  IBM will sell lots of 16-64 processor Blue Gene boxes, just
like they sold lots of small SP-2 boxes, but they'll probably only sell
a very few boxes at the very high end.  Look at the Top500 list (www.top500.org).
Currently, the leader is a Blue Gene box at 70K Rmax, and 10th place has
an Rmax around 9.8K.  But 20th is 7.3K and 30th is 5.5K.  Lots of people are
buying boxes that will land in the 10-100 range, but there's only a few places
that are buying stuff that will land in the Top 10.