The main advantage of a pre-loaded OS...

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| Also interesting, and *much* pricier, is this 448-core add on board:
| <http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7194549&CatId=4044>
| 
| At about $4000, this won't likely go on your desktop :-).  But this
| would be *mighty* interesting to get sold into server space...

That's the .com link.  The .ca link lists it as $4,999.00.

It is two slots wide so you cannot fit too many in your box.

Things I'd want to know before making these available on a cloud
platform:

- is there a high-bandwidth way for a process to talk to the such a
  card without compromising kernel or other process security?  This
  may be possible with the latest IOMMU improvements.

- is there a way to partition a card so that two processes could use
  different parts without endangering each other?

- is there a way to virtualize the card without serious performance
  costs?

I'm not even sure whether the kernel is safe from a process that has
raw access to a "video card".  Perhaps recent versions of IOMMUs make
it safe.  I don't know if there is a high-bandwidth non-raw way for a
process to talk to a video card.
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