Comments on: A masterpiece in 0.08 seconds

By: Videobreak: CPU vs. GPU, Mythbusters style « The Way Things Break

Videobreak: CPU vs. GPU, Mythbusters style « The Way Things Break — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:28:28 +0000

[...] [H/T Bad Astronomy] [...]

By: madge

madge — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:29:01 +0000

Think Leonardo would have liked one of those?

By: News From Around The Blogosphere 9.7.08 « Skepacabra

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.7.08 « Skepacabra — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:26:17 +0000

[...] This is awesome: [...]

By: IBY

IBY — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:58:01 +0000

That was giga cool! It is not fair, I can’t get my hands on them.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:52:10 +0000

My Son sent it to me last week. Comes in handy having offspring as interested in techno stuuf as the old Da.

Impressive! Wish I had as big a budget to play around with as do they.

GAry 7

By: Todd W.

Todd W. — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:11:29 +0000

I was kind of partial to the camera shot from upstage of the gun. Very cool to see the Mona Lisa extruded into a cloud.

By: Harold

Harold — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:38 +0000

It’s Dali’s Abraham Lincoln!

http://www.3d-dali.com/Tour/galacontemplating.htm

The first demonstration was disturbingly reminiscent of the Midwest mailbox bomber back in 2002, who was planting bombs whose locations would form a smiley-face pattern.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/05/09/mailbox.pipebombs/index.html

By: Joe_Pilot

Joe_Pilot — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:58:12 +0000

Good points re parallel vs serial computing, however this example is just like the end of the show when they have confirmed or busted a myth and then go for THE BIG FINISH – just because they can.

The exploding cement truck comes to mind.

This is one of the coolest things I have seen these guys do, ever. Truly made of awesome.

-JP

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:20:24 +0000

I would have actually been more impressed if the second example had been a four paint gun model that would have done the same drawing in one fourth the time. That would have modelled the typical single core CPU vs the quad-core. As it is, it’s a bit like comparing an abacus to a supercomputer farm, a bit overkill.

Robert

By: Quiet Desperation

Quiet Desperation — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:43:13 +0000

0.08 seconds + the time it took to build and program the machine.

I run into this problem at work. We have a couple Beowulf clusters of Linux machines, but there’s cases where it would take longer to code something up for parallel processing than just writing and running a simpler program that runs the desired calculation serially. Not always, but sometimes.

Blizno has a point, too. You could probably create a single barrel gun that can create the same Mona Lisa picture in just a second or so, with less NRE (non-recurring engineering, or the act of building the gun).

That being said, way cool video. Thanks, Phil.

By: «bønez_brigade»

«bønez_brigade» — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:28:42 +0000

I was non-statistical a few minutes ago, but you have now deflowered me.
That reminded me a little of Survival Research Labs machinery, though less ruinous.

By: IVAN3MAN

IVAN3MAN — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:34:25 +0000

There’s only one word in the English language that best describes this presentation — SPLENDID!

By: J. D. Mack

J. D. Mack — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:20:22 +0000

That sooooo reminds me of the Steve Martin joke about the Mona Lisa being painted in one stroke!

J. D.

By: John Moeller

John Moeller — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:12:36 +0000

As usual, the truth is more complicated than Adam & Jaime make it out. But if a cool demonstration gets people interested in learning more, all the better. I was actually at that convention, but I missed the presentation. I’m now sorry I did.

By: Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum

Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:06:54 +0000

Now THAT is cool!
Make it 1,700,001 views!
Thanks!

By: Blizno

Blizno — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:06:11 +0000

That’s a false comparison. Each of the operations shown in the parallel processing example happen at the speed of explosion while each of the operations in the serial processing example happen chunkka…chunkka…chunkka…
In reality, each operation in a typical serial processing computer happens at megaflops speed while each operation in a parallel processing computer would happen much, much, much slower. The operations in the parallel processing computer are all happening at the same time, therefore the entire calculation could be much faster than the same calculation done by a serial processing computer, but this portrayal is very badly skewed.
I’d like to see them to redo this with appropriate speeds. Have the serial computer example fire as fast as Governor Jesse’s gun in the movie Predator while the parallel processor example spits all the paintballs f-u-u-u-w-w-h-h-h-a-a-a-a at the same time.

By: John Marley

John Marley — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:51:18 +0000

That is awesome!

By: Robert Krendik

Robert Krendik — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:37:40 +0000

Holy…O_O