Don't you need to measure the time difference from the "first" neutrinos arriving and the first light arriving?

How could you chronologically differentiate all subsequent neutrinos and light?

The comparison is based on 1 FPGA vs. 1 CPU Core of an Intel Xeon E5430 2.66GHz.

More details:
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/archives/xcell/issue74/FPGAs-speed-computation-complex-credit-derivatives.pdf

I think you're underestimating the bank.

The cost of this solution might have been low enough to warrant the immediate gains in performance.
The lock-in you describe might not exist, as the algorithms and the accelerated bits are a small portion of the entire code-base (but take 99% of the run-time).
It will very likely be the case that the cost of not going with this solution is far far greater than going for it.

GPUs are much more power hungry compared to FPGA and provide a fraction of the performance.

At the end of the day, GPUs are designed for gaming machines... the whole GPGPU thing is a side show for the graphics market. It's just not optimized in any way for this sort of computation. There's little money to be made building supercomputers compared to selling gaming machines.

However, an FPGA can be completely customized to suit your exact needs, you will make efficient use of the entire chip. It won't be a mere coincidence (like in the GPU case) that the chip can be used for a computation that you need. The FPGA is customized directly to fit an algorithm. this efficiency is where the speed gains are made.

It seems people put a lot of effort in to making their software compatible with GPUs and changing their algorithms to fit the GPU model.. this is a distorted view of reality - it is the computer that needs and can change to suit the problem, not the other way around.

1 Virtex-6 SX475T could give you about 1 billion SHA-256 hashes/second clocked at 200MHz., will use 20% the power of the ATI GPU. but will cost about 4 times as much.

Checkout: http://www.maxeler.com/

They've been getting some pretty crazy results. If i understand correctly, they've got a completely innovative workflow, tool-chain and abstraction. I think they've even created their own simulation tools that give you cycle-accurate results 1000x faster than modelsim.

I think google did the right thing - get the critical mass - then use the leverage.

see:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/31/google-tightening-control-of-android-insisting-licensees-abide/

You get the choice of buying android from a different carrier/manufacturer.

With apple, you're stuck with iTunes... no other choice or option.

Since when is apple a carrier?

Last time I checked, Carriers make money through call tariffs - barely from accessories or ad revenue etc.
Apple makes their money from selling the hardware. Motorola, Samsung, HTC etc make their money also from selling hardware.

Some carrier see greater value in Android as they can fill it up with their rubbish content and try making even more money - beyond the call charges.

Thankfully, Android is open and you can just rip away all the garbage some carriers push into it.

The German people in east Germany wanted to be freed.

big difference.

It became "one of *the* big names" after it partnered with Google and went for Android.

17 out of 29 current HTC devices run Android, the rest WinMo.

What's your point?

1 - It's the apple trolls that claim that iOS is the largest (in terms of market share) platform - so if you play their game you might as well give accurate facts.

2 - Market share proves nothing except for how successfully a product was marketed.

3 - You keep comparing the iPhone line to all Android phones in existence. And you somehow attempt to pass this as a valid comparison by treating android as a BRAND, when in fact it's not a brand. You fail to realize that android is an open platform that is running on a host of different devices. Android is like Linux - it can run on ANYTHING - even those over-priced under-performing shiny white toys apple tries to pass as "computers" - oh, sorry.. i meant, "The Apple experience delivery platforms".

4 - If we refer back to point (2) you will note that Android is EXTREMELY successful, in terms of a financial success and being a market leader. It does not mean that android is "better" or is a whole "solution". Whether you like it or not, Android is doing in the phone space what Windows has done in the PC. Yes, PC is the dominant platform - even though Apple tries to present as a platform for suit wearing "serious" consumers, compared to the trendy and cool musical-silhouettes Macs are.

5 - Units sold is the measure by which Market share is determined. And while we agree it says nothing about the quality of the end product - the fact that Android has a massive market share, makes the entire platform more attractive for developers which in turn increases the market share even further. That's a positive feedback loop. Just like Microsoft has in the PC market.

6 - "average" experience is meaningless, because had you listened to anything I had to say, you would realize that Android is not the WHOLE solution. it's merely PART of the solution. And the fact that carriers deter from the experience is not Android's fault... but that doesn't matter, since the more android phones there are the more "alive" the platform is. See point (5)

And here lies the difference between us.

You care about building or cheapening a "brand".

I care about the technical aspects of a product.