On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Adrian Vickers wrote:
> >This leads to one mind-boggling possibility. If one etches custom boards
> >with eight Z80s each, and pumps all eight each clock, and one takes
> >several thousand of these boards, wouldn't that be a rather interesting
> >MPP supercomputer? Would it be more or less money than one made with,
> >say, IBM POWER4s, or Alphas, or StrongARMs?
>
> Heh! I like it... The chips would be cheaper in bulk as well, and with a
> bit of heatsinking it should be possible to overclock them somewhat.
How hot do Z80s get under normal operation? Would you be able to
overclock them using heatsinks without fans? That would simplify things a
bit.
> Mind you, even with discounts you're looking at twenty grand just to sort
> out your processor farm; and you still need the i/o logic...
Yes, but how fast a computer would you get for $20,000? Would it be
faster than other machines at that price? I don't think the I/O would be
a big deal. You could use off-the-shelf components to do it.
> Still, 8000 Z80s running at 4MHz could theoretically yield the equivalent
> of 1 Z80 running at 32GHz.
That's assuming that the task you're running can be parallelized to that
degree. And plus, if you were to run each of these hypothetical 8-Z80
boards as a single CPU, you would have a 64-bit system.
Peace... Sridhar
> Would Manic Miner be playable at that speed? ;)
> Cheers!
> Ade.
> --
> B-Racing: B where it's at :-)
> http://www.b-racing.co.uk
>
Received on Tue Aug 21 2001 - 14:05:14 BST