My point is that the hardware/dedicated world used to be expensive (even
when it was dedicated chessmachines), but that software has made things a
lot cheaper for users, and has given them a lot of options (of course THANKS
to the progress not only from software but also because of hardware
progress), which IMHO is a good thing if you look from it at user
viewpoint.
If you fail to believe so, then that's up to you of course. Just never look
in the mirror i'd say.
Vincent
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Eadline" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Angel Dimitrov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <beowulf@beowulf.org>;
"Robert G. Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Jim Lux" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters
Vincent,
I fear I have fallen into a "vincent-hole" in which there exists
a point at which a discussion-horizon is crossed
and my ability to understand what you are talking
about ceases to exist. For me, after crossing this threshold
the point of the discussion is lost and I enter a state
of maximum entropy.
--
Doug
Some manufacturers exported to 106 countries certain types of machines.
This all happened from end 70s to start 90s.
Software has total ended all that. What happens now is that some machine
sometimes sells in 1 country a 100k units, but that's all lowend
dedicated
units.
It is no compare. Realize the huge boom of software games when PC's
arrived.
Right now the big games (other than chess) sell 3-5 million copies a year
(50-100 euro a product),
and compared to that chess is very tiny. Chessmaster still claims 4
million
unit sales, but that's over
a number of years, not within 1 year.
So in that sense releasing a chessproduct is commercially not so
interesting.
Creating some new game, making a lot of bla bla around it and hope to get
one of the games that sell 3-5 million copies a year, is far more
interesting.
If you compare that with hardware, then those manufacturers still rip off
people. That new quad
core2 chip is going to release at 999 euro next month and of course is
very
fast.
But just look to the huge price of it as compared to software games.
Vincent
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Eadline" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Geoff Jacobs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Angel Dimitrov"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <beowulf@beowulf.org>; "Jim Lux"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Robert G. Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters
>
Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
-- snip --
Well the hard facts is that hundreds of thousands of $3000-$20k
chesscomputers (dedicated with a 10Mhz chip) have been sold until the
pc
was
faster than the dedicated chesscomputers. A vaste multiple indeed of
that
of
$50-$1000 computers has been sold at the time.
Are you saying: At least 100,000 chess computers were sold for an
average of $6000 (US) for a total of $600,000,000 before the PC was
introduced. Almost a billion dollar chess computer market segment.
You are right, that is a hard fact to believe.
--
Doug
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--
Doug
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