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- From: turner@beta.lanl.gov (John A. Turner)
- Subject: Re: What are people paying for when they by a supercomputer?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov19.170552.18420@newshost.lanl.gov>
- Summary: great parties
- Sender: John A. Turner
- Organization: Los Alamos National Lab
- Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 17:05:52 GMT
- Lines: 33
-
- Well, I can't resist. Whoever said you should be at Supercomputing '92
- to resolve this question was right. I found out the true answer last
- night: great parties.
-
- I first went to TMC's party. They had rented out an entire *very*
- nice restaurant. Drinks were free (and they had Sam Adams lager and
- Oktoberfest as well as some local brews on tap) and the food was
- incredible.
-
- Having been tipped off to get to Intel's party at one of the main hotels
- by 9:30, which was when the follow-up party would be announced, I left
- TMC's and rushed over. Got there just as the Minnesota Vikings cheer-
- leaders were handing out Intel medallions and shepherding people onto
- buses. The buses took us to Prince's nightclub, _Glam Slam_, where
- Intel had rented a very large room. Again free drinks (but no really
- good brews) and good food (although not nearly as good as TMC's).
- [Unfortunately, it seemed to me that some of the attendees appeared
- somewhat, uh, shall we say, less than comfortable at _Glam Slam_.]
-
- Very different approaches, but both fun. I must say I think I preferred
- TMC's overall.
-
- So *that* is what people are paying for when they buy a supercomputer!
-
- -John
-
- P.S. To preempt any comments about boondoggles, etc., let me just say
- that the technical content of this meeting has been excellent,
- and that I was here at 8:30 AM this morning for the panel
- discussion/debate titled "Which Fortran for High-Performance
- Computing?", which was lots of fun. But that's for another post.
-
- P.P.S. This is also the most well-organized conference I've ever attended.
-