On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) <james.p....@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote: > Unfortunately, the HPC (Beowulf) world is driven by the economics of the > ordinary consumer/office desktop computer. That's what lets you build a > teraflop machine without incurring the debt of a small country: you can > leverage the mass production for consumers which drives the prices down, but > also has very short product cycles. > > The 3 year cycle is driven by in large part by IRS depreciation rules which > call computer equipment a "5-year" piece of gear, but
On the other hand many of the Beowulfers are in the govt. / university / higher-ed. domain where things run somewhat "tax free"? Not sure if then these IRS writeoffs then factor much into decision making or not. All the more reason to avoid getting locked-in to 3-year vendor cycles. -- Rahul _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
