HTML version of Scripted Foils prepared 27 August 1996

Foil 169 Anecdotes from HPCC Software Industry Arena

From CPS615-Introduction-Course,Driving Technology and HPCC Current Status and Futures CPS615 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science -- Fall Semester 96. by Geoffrey C. Fox *
1 Anecdotes from Thinking Machines (TMC) April 94 before the fall
  • "They would like to be a software company but you can only sell software if bundled with hardware"
  • Customers did not buy TMC hardware because TMC's software was too good and so one couldn't then get the federal grants to improve parallel systems software
2 Anecdote from Digital September 94:
  • Digital cannot make money on their scientific software package for alpha workstations
  • If Digital charged true cost of development and maintenance, users would make do with good (but not optimized or as complete) public domain software
  • So if workstation market not viable for simulation software, how can much smaller MPP market lead to viable business plans?
in Table To:

© Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, npac@npac.syr.edu

If you have any comments about this server, send e-mail to webmaster@npac.syr.edu.

Page produced by wwwfoil on Wed Aug 27 1997