Re: Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors

John Savard <quadibloc@servername.invalid> schrieb:

On Tue, 23 Apr 2024 02:14:32 +0000, mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1)
wrote:
>

CRAY machines stayed "in style" as long as memory latency remained smaller
than the length of a vector (64 cycles) and fell out of favor when the cores
got fast enough that memory could no longer keep up.
>
I whish them well, but I expect it will not work out as they desire.....

>
I know that you've said this about Cray-style vectors.
>
I had thought the cause was much simpler. As soon as chiips like the
486 DX and then the Pentium II became available,

The 486 came out in 1989.

a Cray-style machine
would have had to be implemented from smaller-scale integrated
circuits, so it would have been wildly uneconomic for the performance
it provided;

The Cray C90 came out in 1991.  That was still considered ecomomic
by the people who bought it :-)

The (low-level) competition for scientific computing at the time
was workstations.