Crays and password cracking

[carroll at s.cs.uiuc.edu]

/* Written  6:28 pm  Nov 15, 1988 by ds at arson.cray.com in s.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.unix.wizards */
/* ---------- "Crays and password cracking" ---------- */
In V6#016, jerry at olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) writes:
>(...) the Cray is not a very fast CPU for non-vector operations.

There may well be machines faster than Crays for scalar (non-vector)
operations, I don't know.  The benchmarks that I have seen have
generally concentrated on vector operations.  But if a 6.4 nanosecond
clock qualifies as "not very fast", I wonder what you need to be "fast" ;-)
Dave Sielaff
/* End of text from s.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.unix.wizards */

Ah, I think the problem here is 'fast' vs. 'fast/unit$'. There are a number
of machine faster *per dollar* than a Cray for *scalar* operations. What
that means is that for a fixed budget, you can get more scalar power for
cracking passwords. However, if you already have access to a Cray and/or
don't have to pay for it yourself, that's a different ball game.
P.S. Numbers - Cray cycle approx 5ns -> about 200 Mips. Sun workstation,
about 4 Mips. Factor of 50 in speed (*scalar*), but a Cray costs a lot
more than 50 times a 4Mips sun workstation.