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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Petz who wrote (90621)	1/31/2000 1:56:00 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576348

tejek, re:<Mtops> What is an "Mtop?" How can an 800 MHz Itanium do 25,000 Mtops? This would imply that Itanium can do over 30 "tops" per clock cycle. I suspect Itanium can do 8 single precision flops/clock cycle or double the performance of PIII or Athlon, so maybe they are talking about a 4-way server. Petz, have no idea....first I have heard of a Mtop was the article that I posted. Also first I heard US restricts pc sales to certain countries. ted

To: Petz who wrote (90621)	1/31/2000 2:17:00 PM
From: Windsock	Respond to of 1576348

Petz - Re: "What is an "Mtop?" This is an acronym for Million Theoretical OPerations per second. This is a calculated number using a government formula that determines whether a system, or in this case a single processor, requires an export control license. The government position is that too much computing power will allow supercomputer level calculations and the bad guys can design nuclear weapons. The continuous advances in processor performance results in new processors pushing the MTOP limit and the limit keeps getting raised. On occasion, a single processor is not subject to an export license but a dual processor board is subject to a license. The ridiculous result is that Sun can export a single SPARC processor but not a multiprocessor system. So while Sun waits for an export license to sell a system, a foreign board stuffer can assemble 2 uncontrolled SPARC processors in a multiprocessor board and sell it free of any license requirement. Sun looses the business and the bad guys get the system from a supplier outside the US. But the government still insists on regulating the export of products from the US that are easily obtained in the global market outside the US.