On: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

[srean]

My comment should really be an Ask HN. But is it conceivable to build a CM-5 class computer on FPGA boards ? Any idea how much that would cost if it was possible ?

[thesz → srean]

Late CM-5 was 64-node MIPS connected through hypercube or fat tree. I think you can fit several MIPSes into one high-class FPGA - it looks like 4 would fit nicely into Virtex 5 TXT series, not so sure about more.

I think that you will need custom boards for interconnection.

So it will be some costly project.

Plasma, a simple MIPS-I variant: http://opencores.org/project,plasma

[srean → thesz]

Thanks and upvoted for the reply and the link. Did not expect my comment to picked up, given I joined so late in the thread. In terms of raw FLOPS I think one can comfortably top the CM-5 machines with current commodity hardware. But it would have been pretty cool to have a personal CM-5 to play with.