> > When you are trying to educate people about cluster computing, the > most > important thing is conveying the difficulties (both performance and > infrastructure related) working at scale -- not simply showing off > that > the thing is "faster."
HPC and beowulf are *only* about performance and nothing else. What you write is kind of: "i get my salary anyway and i like to toy with useless hardware". Clusters *always* are wasting power, are loud, overexpensive, have all sorts of problems, and can only be fast if you program for them in a very specific manner. They CAN be used however to take a look into the future what you CANNOT calculate at a single machine for the same price. You mentionned something about price. Look at ebay. I know most professors don't like looking there. $2000 for 85 machines ready to use: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-85-Dell-PowerEdge1850-Xeon-3-20-GHz- Servers-with-4096-Mb-Memory-/271045828824? pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item3f1b9720d8 Build a 85 core cluster with it @ 320 GB. If you explain it's for students and offer $850 the guy might take the bid as well. There is also bunches of 4 core offers of dual xeon dual core 51xx type processor machines. Those are pretty fast actually and if you build a cluster with THEM, you really have big crunching power to impress all your students - not just the geek who walks on jerusalem sandals. > Remember, students are paying CUSTOMERS for the > education; you should assume they are already interested in the > concepts > and theory. It's not the educators job to spark this interest or feed > some flop-lust, but it is their job to expose as much of the theory > and > pragmatics to the student as possible. This IS possible with MANY > slower machines, but ISN'T possible with FEW faster machines. If a > few > students are being stubborn like you and want to drop the class > because > the cluster isn't "fast enough," their loss. > > Best, > > ellis > _______________________________________________ > 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 _______________________________________________ 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
