On 17 Sep 2008, at 2:22 pm, Lux, James P wrote:
But how is that any different than having a PC on your desk?
I see the deskside supercomputer as a revisiting of the
"workstation" class computer. Used to be that PCs and Apples were
what sat on most peoples desks, but some had Apollo or Sun or Perq
workstations, because they had applications that needed the
computational horsepower (or, more likely, the high res hardware
graphics support.. A CGA was pretty painful for doing PC board
layout).
Same sort of thing for having the old Tektronix 4014 graphics
terminal, rather than hiking down to the computer center to pick up
your flatbed plotter output.
Jim
We don't generally allow people here to buy their own PCs and Apples
either. They get a standard build from us, all centrally managed by
LanDESK. They also get a known type of hardware; they can't just buy
what the hell they like. I have more than 800 Windows desktops to
support. If they were all different and purchased ad-hoc by
individual users, I would be in even worse hell than I am already.
Most people don't build Beowulf clusters out of ad-hoc piles of
machines from God-knows-where. Most of us buy consistent hardware,
because it's impossible to support anything else.
The Tektronix graphics terminal is slightly different, because it was
just that, a terminal, and consequently doesn't present such a headache.
Tim
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The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research
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