Re:Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine Gen2 7nm 2.6T Transistors
by jecel on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @02:57PM
(#24214606)
I think it is important to separate the several technical failures in wafer scale from the commercial one: Sinclair's Anamartic worked exactly as planned but the prices for conventional hard disks began to drop and that caused investors to pull out.
The problem is that the real project was a massively parallel computer just like the Cerebras (scaled to 1989 technological limits) and the disk replacement was just a way to develop the needed techniques and finance further developments. If the investors had had a little more patience then computing in the 1990s might have been a bit more interesting.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-...
The problem is that the real project was a massively parallel computer just like the Cerebras (scaled to 1989 technological limits) and the disk replacement was just a way to develop the needed techniques and finance further developments. If the investors had had a little more patience then computing in the 1990s might have been a bit more interesting.