Re: [computer-go] Computer Go hardware

[Vincent Diepeveen <diep@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 21:30 18-10-2004 +0100, chrilly wrote:
>
>Waldviertel-Hochland, 18.10.2004
>>
>>What is your opinion on XilinX FORCE?
>>I was a beta tester and I was able to do nested for..each loops, besically
>>just about everything Java supports.
>>
>I have not used it so far. But I wrote a test programm for a C to VHDL
>development/research project. The task was the knight-tour on a chess-board.
>Although I have resolved the recursion and the style of the programm was
>very well suited for automatic translation, they never got a competitive
>translation (Competitive to the performance of the C-Programm on a standard
>PC).
>But I know of projects which use MatLab. It is basically a graphical design.
>You set the structure and the parameters of the DSP-Algorithm.
>Matlab produces for these DSP-applications efficient FPGA-code. In case of
>DSP-Algorithms one knows how to parallize e.g. a FFT. In case of the
>knight-tour there is no obvious way to do this.
>Matlab has some advantages over Verilog/VHDL, but it is not much more work
>to do the same in these languages. Matlab is also veeery expensive.
>
>>
>>One of the reasons I sold the FPGA PCI board was that I only had a Beta
>>licence for 1 month and after that I would have to pay 20,000 USD.
>>
>The prices for this special purpose tools are completly crazy. Even a Sheikh
>is not willing to pay this amount. 

It is a peanut compared to the other costs.

Let's face it what a hydra team costs when it runs for a year. 

Here is my guess. Correct me if you are allowed to.

a) chrilly donninger
  programmer in netherlands is very cheapo compared to germany. i remember
you told me that austria is a cheapo country. 
  35000 euro a year for a bad ( < 6 years experience with hardware
programming, no other criterium)  hardware programmer here
b) university paderborn has a fulltime tester for you
   not sure if sheik must pay that. clusters are about 6000 euro
   a node. a 16 processor cluster has been build there. is 8 nodes.
  48000 euro.
c) sheikh himself has a bunch of 8 processor machines. I didn't count well
but he
wants to expand it to a 32 processor machine. a stand alone is about 100000
euro and he has already a bunch of them.
So that's 400000 euro. That's excluding the fpga cards

d) hardware you have at home probably is worth when bought several
thousands too.
I estimate you have some duals.
e) the pakistani Muhammad leading the project probably earns a UAE type
salary. A manager here would do roughly 40000 euro a year, perhaps it's
cheaper in UAE. I don't know. 
f) hardware cards. it's true you guys use completely outdated fpga cards. I
remember 33Mhz or so. Correct me if i'm wrong. By now 400Mhz is pretty normal.

z) the sheikh has plans to create a 1000 processor hydra. The machine
itself he can perhaps sell to some other Arab organisation, but he also
wants to run hydra at it.
That's a great idea of course, but 1000 fpga cards might be pretty
expensive when using 400Mhz ones. The outdated 33Mhz ones might be more
realistic and when buying so much you can buy them easily for 500 dollar a
piece. 

Even ignoring point z, total costs are for a few years of operation a
million euro for just the hydra project.

What's that lousy 10000-20000 euro for a bit better 'compiler' then and a
16 processor cluster to quickly compile it?

Oh wait, the clusters to quickly compile you already have...

Vincent

>The basic XiLinx synthesis tool comes for
>2.500 USD/year.

$500 for a simple card+tools.

>Chrilly
>
>
>
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