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[QuakeIV]

This is looking like a pretty cool thread, i have to ask though, are there any solutions that cost less then sixty dollars per core? 

[Baughn]

Finance an effort to port DF to the human brain, then install it in your head.

That'll probably run to a few billion, but at one hundred billion neurons per brain, it's definitely less than 60$ per core.

[Jay]

Finance an effort to port DF to the human brain, then install it in your head.

That'll probably run to a few billion, but at one hundred billion neurons per brain, it's definitely less than 60$ per core.

One neuron is not all that powerful though, and DF isn't threaded..  :|

[QuakeIV]

Interesting note, one neuron is only capable of 100 HZ. However, yes, there are 100 billion of them, adding up to 10 Tera-hertz.

[G-Flex]

Interesting note, one neuron is only capable of 100 HZ. However, yes, there are 100 billion of them, adding up to 10 Tera-hertz.

That's sort of like saying that if I put more wheels on my car, they'll have more total RPMs so the car will go faster.

[Baughn]

Quite. You need entirely different algorithms to run in parallel, and the more parallel a computer is, the less efficient those algorithms will be. N cycles over M cores is never as fast as N*M cycles on one core, and the larger M is, the worse it gets.

For the human brain, N=~100-200 or so, M=100 billion. You do the math. Yes, we're incredibly inefficient; giant lookup tables, really.

[G-Flex]

Of course, that's still using incredibly bastardized analogies of human brains to binary computers running whatever processor architecture you choose, which is incredibly naive in the first place.

[John Hopoate]

Along with an appropriate motherboard with an appropriate bus .

The bus is part of the CPU these days, as for the motherboard, you just want to make sure that you buy something overclockable from a reliable brand, I'd be inclined to buy this motherboard even though it's one of the most expensive H55/H57 boards because it has USB3. It's still only $120 US, it's not THAT expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128430&cm_re=H57-_-13-128-430-_-Product

If you didn't want USB3 you could buy something roughly equivilent for $90-100

DF is also pretty memory-intensive. You'll want the fastes memory you can get.

These days CPUs aren't very limited by memory bandwidth, in most cases halving the memory bandwidth will only reduce performance by less than 5%, only if you're using integrated graphics for gaming can you expect to experience significant slowdowns. In any case an overclocked i3 or i5 will typically have a pair of DDR3-1600 modules running at close to their full potential.

This is looking like a pretty cool thread, i have to ask though, are there any solutions that cost less then sixty dollars per core? 

As I mentioned previously, for Dwarf Fortress the Core i3-530 is ideal @ $125, you'd want to spend about $35 on something like this and crank it up to 4ghz or so:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134

If you really did have a $60 per core budget then I'd suggest that cooler plus this, unlike the i3 it has less cache and no hyperthreading.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116283&cm_re=Intel_Pentium-_-19-116-283-_-Product

Your "$60 per core) thinking is a bit flawed though, the AMD Athlon II X4 620 is four cores for only $90, that's only $22.50 per core, sounds great right? Nope, it only runs at 2.6ghz and doesn't have any L3 cache, per core it's probably like an Intel i3 or i5 dual core running at 2ghz. You'd get more cores for your money but for Dwarf Fortress and the vast majority of things people their computers for, the performance would be disappointing.

[John Hopoate]

EDIT: Sorry, I quoted instead of edited

[QuakeIV]

Just saying, they are still pretty damn expensive, a 1336 socket mboard doesent help, and RAM that utilises their full potential... is alot.

Although its all rediculously cheap in perspective, its still alot, just like a 10,000 dollar pickup is cheap, for a car, but someone still might not be able to afford that then.

But yeah ill have to say an i3 or i5 are the way to go, intel is smashing the hell outta AMD these days.

[John Hopoate]

Just saying, they are still pretty damn expensive, a 1336 socket mboard doesent help, and RAM that utilises their full potential... is alot.

Only the high end i7's use 1336 motherboards and they're really not any faster than the LGA 1156 quad cores anyway. Decent LGA 1156 motherboards (P55, H55 and H57) start at about $90 and DDR3-1600 is only slightly more expensive than DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1066, about $90-$100 for 4gb of brand name DDR3.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128420
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115222

Motherboard+CPU+Ram total price: $309

add an after market CPU fan and your total price is $344, not bad for the sort of power you'll be getting at 4ghz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134

[xoen]

Interesting note, one neuron is only capable of 100 HZ. However, yes, there are 100 billion of them, adding up to 10 Tera-hertz.

That's sort of like saying that if I put more wheels on my car, they'll have more total RPMs so the car will go faster.

thousand snails are almost 1 horse, you shouldn't argue with that, goddamit

--
What interesting is - i wonder if ram bus speed is making ANY difference(i mean 800mhz+), personally doubt it.

[QuakeIV]

Well, i wouldnt say so myself, i image it would be a big one.

Im not very experienced there though, i learned what a system bus was a week ago.

[Armok]

Actualy, snails can crawl on top of eachother, The snail on the top will have it's own speed relative the one below, making it's total speed duble, so if you piled all 1000 snails in a tower...

[Biag]

Guys, guys, guys. This is all well and good, but I think a bigger question needs to be addressed.

How would we go about building a liquid/mech logic computer within DF, then programming DF on it, and running a game within a game? Or at least Rogue? I think it's theoretically possible, with enough space and enough computing power... the only problem would be display.

EDIT: I am officially naming this the "Dwarven Mirror Problem," after my friend's reaction to the idea- "don't build a mirror reflecting a mirror."