cce blog

phoenix

so a few hours ago i got in to phoenix -- i'm here for the supercomputing conference, to make sure that our demo hardware doesn't suffer a debilitating kernel crash. also to attend some technical talks. oh, plus to relax, after having taken the computer science GRE last saturday and the general GRE on wednesday. i'm finally feeling that test-preparation stress lifted. aahhh.

so far all i've seen of phoenix has been the airport and the highways leading to my lovely hotel, where i have a nicely-appointed room. thus all i know of arizona right now is that there are a lot of shack-like houses built near the highway that remind me somewhat of vietnam. plus denny's. they have denny's here. oh, and i saw a guy wearing a cowboy hat driving a pickup truck. these things amaze me for some reason. obviously this means i need to leave get off the east coast and see more of the U.S. sometime.

in the papers today there were a whole lot of articles about the prototype machine we've been using at work. depending on which article you read it's either "dishwasher-sized" or "TV-sized." i'd say "TV-sized" is stretching it -- perhaps a big-screen TV. you can judge for yourself from bluegene prototype photos if you wish.

we also got ranked as the #73 fastest computer, which is neat. keep in mind this is only for our 512-node prototype -- the final machine will have 65,000 nodes. so, superfast.

okay, time to sleep. i can't believe they're charging $10/day for internet access in my hotel room. grrr.