At 11:08 PM 8/20/2006, Greg Lindahl wrote:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 10:47:00AM +1000, SIM DOG wrote:
> I recently visited a large educational institution (that shall remain
> nameless) that hosts an excellent, world class, science research team.
> They also have a reasonably large Beowulf environment (over 100 dual
nodes).
>
> Now maybe it was just the people I was talking too (management) but I
> get the distinct impression that they treat their 'Wulf as an
> 'appliance'. It came as a great disappointment :/
Why so?
That cluster didn't cost that much compared to half a person, unless
the person is a grad student. Which doesn't fit their reliability
criterion ;-)
I'm a big fan of supercomputing appliances. It's only when a cluster
is big that it always makes sense to have an on-staff expert.
I'd agree.. it's a sign of maturity of the cluster concept that they *are*
considered appliances. Of course, if you are a cluster designer/builder,
you'd love to tinker with it, but the vast majority of users shouldn't need to.
here's a paraphrase of classic example in a talk I heard (and I wish I
could remember who it was, or the origin):
Speaker asks all the people in the audience: "Those of you with manual
transmissions in your car, raise your hand."
3/4 of the audience raises their hand.
Speaker: "YOU, with your hands waving in the air, are NOT the people who
should be designing the user interfaces. Build them, fine, but I want the
application to be like an automatic transmission.. puts the power to the
wheels in an optimum fashion and I don't have to think about it, manipulate
it, etc."
Jim
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