On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
The data you provided is interesting. However, if I had such a machine, my work could be much less challenging :)
I would note that people today are making strenuous efforts to retain compatibility with a Haskell98 standard that it only 6 years old! If we are making choices intended to have a lifetime of e.g. 10 years (see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html), then I would observe that the 24gb machine I specced out will, assuming Moore's law lasts, cost only $2k in 5-6 years. The Sun Fire 15k with 288GB of memory and 72 Sparcs (think GPH!), that today costs $2.6m will cost only $155k. Note, since you don't need 72 CPUs, you'll probably be able to get this machine for <$50k. So, perhaps the question here is: What is the planned lifetime of sizeFM? Do we prefer the safety of knowing our code will work at arbitrary scale or the ecstacy of having it run fast today? Put differently, would you rather cope with hardware limitations today or software limitations tomorrow? -Alex- _________________________________________________________________ S. Alexander Jacobson mailto:me@alexjacobson.com tel:917-770-6565 http://alexjacobson.com