Hello James,

  JB> RE: Transport/HyperTransport
    > That's what it is called then? We aren't talking about
    > Symmetric Multi Processors, but with separate MB-CPUs
    > working on the same problem?

You've just mentioned three different things:-

  HyperTransport

    AMD's high-speed serial bus for connecting various
    things (potentially including multiple processors) that
    all live on the same circuit board.

  Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP)

    A (perhaps slightly crufty) approach to parallel
    computing: shove two or more microprocessors onto the
    same bus - they share memory, peripherals etc.

  "Separate MB CPUs"

    Sounds more like what seems to be called "clustering"
    these days: shove a rack full of inexpensive machines
    (which may or may not feature SMP) and link them
    together using something like a gigabit LAN.

The idea introduced to me as "waferscale" could, in theory give
you the same raw processing power as a rack full of conventional PCs, on
something the size of a cookie.  Doing that would introduce some I/O
challenges, and providing a useful amount of memory for each processor core
would be non
-trivial.  That might become more practical once we're able
to build circuits on (or rather in) something that isn't limited to two
dimensions, as a semiconductor wafer is.

  JB> For simplicity sake, would one 'puter work on part A
    > of the math, while the second works on part B?

Yes, but some problems are more tricky than others because if "part
B" depends on the result of "part A", there's some latancy
involved.  If you have a steady stream of identical calculations, that may
not be much of a hit.

- Andy Ball

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