On 2/16/10 1:42 PM, Rahul Nabar wrote:
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.
At MY University, and in all my grants, I plan a 3-year depreciation
cycle (regardless of the grief I gave Jim privately). You've gotta have
a plan. That said, however, I also get to beat the inventory folk
senseless when they tell me I've got a $100k computer on inventory
that's 8 years old and is listed as a '386.
I tend to look for best price/performance ratios. I don't want something
that will perform poorly because it impacts my research as well as that
of the folks who use our clusters. I don't have to go for the cheapest,
especially if it's incompatible. But, I don't go for the most expensive,
without due diligence, just 'cause it costs more than every one else.
gerry
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