[Fsf-friends] Re: [OT] Desktop supercomputers

[Rajkumar S]

Apologies for digressing from the list charter...

Anand Babu wrote:

> Actual design of supercomputer is very much dependent on the 
> application needs. Best way to benchmark is to use the real world 
> applications and measure performance.

One question that I always had about super computers are that, do they
need specialized programs to take advantage of it's processing
power? For example, I have a program for computing X that is running in
my existing cluster (say Beowulf), can I run that application in thunder
and take advantage of it's speed, or do I have to start writing it from
scratch to run in thunder?

No where in super computer literature, I have read about writing
applications for it, except for libraries like PVM. It will be 
interesting to know about how real world applications are written for 
supercomputers.

> Speaking about supercomputers replacing human brain, we really don't
>  know enough about human brain. We don't even have a good acceptable
>  definition for Artificial Intelligence. Its a long way to go to for
>  computers to achieve human like intelligence (30-50 years may be).

As the quote goes, Artificial intelligence is no match for natural
stupidity :)

raj