Re: World record in password checking

[peter honeyman <honey@citi.umich.edu>]

why doesn't this impress me?  i'll tell you why.  with

o   a stock version of des (dennis ferguson's), which is written in c,
    and not optimized for any particular chip or vector hardware

o   a no-name 50 Mhz 486, which you can buy for under $1,000 at fry's

o   netbsd, a freely available general purpose operating system

i have measured 29,000 des crypts per second. 

now give me a "1,024 node" machine made of of these -- admittedly
unwieldy, but no doubt a hell of a lot cheaper than a 1,024 node CM/5
(and a hell of a lot more useful, imho) -- and i can run at three times
the "world record" rate.

	peter, inveterate iconoclast