Fundamental changes to Internet architecture

Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu
Sun Jul 3 18:04:02 UTC 2005


On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 13:43:40 EDT, "Jay R. Ashworth" said:

> And the world demand for computers might someday approach 100?

To be fair to TJ Watson, please note that IBM was *already* engaged in
the production and sales of automated tabulating equipment, and when reading
his comment *in historical context*, it's pretty obvious that what he
*meant* by "computer" was "high end machine that only a few could afford".
In other words, what we now call a "supercomputer".

And sure enough, looking at the current Top500, http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2005&M=06
we see that only 6 sites have bought 20Tflops+ systems, but 19 are 10Tflop+,
and there's a *huge* pool of very similar smaller systems down in positions 300-500.

And this shape has remained remarkably consistent - anywhere from 3-7 systems that are
*way* out in the lead, a second string of several dozen smaller, and a huge pool
of lower-end machines.  So TJ was totally right - at any given time, there's only
5-6 sites willing and able to buy that very top-end box....
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 226 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20050703/77a09c27/attachment.sig>


More information about the NANOG mailing list