>> > It's all about ultimate scalability. Anybody with a moderate >> competence (certainly anyone on this >> list) could devise a scheme to use 1000 perfect processors that never >> fail to do 1000 quanta of work >> in unit time. It's substantially more challenging to devise a scheme to >> do 1000 quanta of work in >> unit time on, say, 1500 processors with a 20% failure rate. Or even in >> 1.2*unit time. >> > >> >> Just to be clear - I wasn't saying this was a bad idea. Scaling up to >> this size seems inevitable. I was just imagining the team of admins who >> would have to be working non-stop to replace dead processors! >> >> I wonder what the architecture for this system will be like. I imagine >> it will be built around small multi-socket blades that are hot-swappable >> to handle this. > > > > I think that you just anticipate the failures and deal with them. It's > challenging to write code to do this, but it's certainly a worthy > objective. I can easily see a situation where the cost to replace dead > units is so high that you just don't bother doing it: it's cheaper to just > add more live ones to the "pool".
I wrote about the programming issue in a series of three articles (conjecture, never really tried it, if only I had the time ...). The first article links (at the end) to the other two. http://www.clustermonkey.net//content/view/158/28/ And yes, disposable "nodes" just like a failed cable in a large cluster, route a new one, don't worry about unbundling a huge cable tree. I assume there will be a high level of integration so there may be "nodes" are left for dead which are integrated into a much larger blade. -- Doug > _______________________________________________ > 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 > > -- > This message has been scanned for viruses and > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is > believed to be clean. > -- Doug -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ 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
