On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 08:50 +0100, Mikael Fredriksson wrote: > Eric Shook wrote: > > I talked to our SGI rep about this yesterday and he told me they are not > > really targeting "hard-core" university research where Linux/UNIX > > already has a strong foot hold. Instead this is for the Business sector > > where simplified workflows and having easy HPC integration into an > > already 100% Windows Infrastructure is more appealing. > > > > This was his take and it seemed reasonable to me. > > Yes, it is. And more so if this cluster/LAN can also utilize som type > of "MOSIX" system. This will substatially increase the throughput of > "standard serial" processes.
I find this statement hard to comprehend, how can any OS substantially improve throughput of jobs unless what it replaces is incredibly deficient in some way? The limiting factor on clusters is the speed of the hardware, even if some OS magically manages to be say 50% more efficient doing it's bit than another OS it's still only a tiny percent of time used, substantial improvements in job throughput can only come about from better parallel algorithms, better code or faster hardware. > But as stated in a previous thread, the "hard-core" systems are fairly > specialized. I think you may be surprised if you actually used a hard-core system, whilst it's true that they are more than the sum of their parts the parts are mostly that of a bog standard Linux distribution. I suppose it could be true that changing to OS to Windows would make them less specialised however that probably says more about Windows than it does about "hard-core" clusters, I've no idea if this statement would be true any more however, I've not used Windows in a number of years. Ashley, _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
