I would say that the single biggest problem in HPC today is not getting sufficient hardware horsepower, but in effectively using that power. 10 years ago, just getting a cluster going was a bit of a challenge, in terms of knowing what hardware to get, how to interconnect it, etc, but now, a lot of that is cookbook (or available turnkey from a variety of vendors... A very different matter from when Sterling, et al wrote their book back in 98/99). Sure, there are still hardware issues that are worthy of discussion on this list (details of interconnects, etc.), but one doesn¹t see the discussions about topologies that one saw back then. The hardware is now to the point where you rack up the computers, hook them all to a very fast switch with huge bisection bandwidth, and you¹re done.
However, the topic of taking a simple problem and effectively parallelizing it (either at a EP level as can be done with some Monte Carlo or systematic simulations, or at a fine grained level, as with matrix numerical modeling) is very much grist for the mill. After all, what are all those folks building parallelizing/vectorizing compilers trying to do but reduce the substantial software engineering/design problem, so that a scientist or engineer can just write their problem out in simple form, and have ³the backend² figure out how to do it efficiently (or at all). There are many problems which are, by their nature, software design complex enough that it is not reasonable to have the person ³asking the question² also be knowledgeable enough to manage the substantial software development project. This would be true, if for no other reason than managing a software development effort takes a different skill set than asking good science or engineering questions. So, the real challenge facing builders (in the larger sense) of Beowulfs is in developing methods to get the work actually done, and if that requires developing skills in ³eliciting requirements² or, more probably, ³communicating between software speak and science speak², then this is an appropriate place to do it (if not here, then where *would* be a place where it¹s more germane.. I can't think of one off hand) It's sort of like our discussions about communicating with the facilities folks about power requirements or HVAC. Someone building a cluster needs to know something about this to be an intelligent consumer, but nobody expects the scientist to be down there sweating copper pipes for the chiller or cabling up the EPO button for the UPS. The list is valuable because there *are* folks here who do know how to sweat pipes, manage software projects, and interpret the electrical code, and you can ask a question about such things and get a host of responses, some more useful than others. Jim On 9/3/08 9:10 AM, "Prentice Bisbal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This discussion is still completely off-topic. This is a list about > computing issues relating to beowulf clusters, not software engineering > at large, sociology or psychology. > > > _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
