On 05/12/2013 01:55 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: > > > I just ran across an interesting anecdote (in Malcolm Gladwell's > "Outliers"). It's in the context of Bill Joy, who commented that using > timesharing and interactive systems compared to traditional batch/card > deck submission was like speed chess vs chess by mail. That > interactivity facilitated his spending thousands of hours working with > software. > > I see parallels to the cluster world. The original Beowulfs were > essentially owned by one person, who could do what they wanted with > them, when they wanted to. If they wanted to reload all the software > with a new version and try something, they could do that. If they wanted > to rearrange the network switches, they could. It's very interactive. > > Compare to the current large clusters. When you have 1000 nodes, you're > not going to say "hmm, if we rearrange the interconnect, I wonder what > happens". And that million dollar machine is going to have a batch > queue, a scheduler, etc. . I am amused to read all the stuff on this > list over the years, as we've moved from "bunch of boxes on shelves in > my office" to things very reminiscent of my early days in big iron. > Sure, the modern user of a cluster doesn't have to punch a deck of > cards and hike down to the computer center (or, if lucky, to the RJE > station in their building); they can submit the job by a few keystrokes > online. But it's still "submit and wait", as opposed to "type line, > press enter, and get results immediately". > > Gladwell and Joy talk about this interactivity in the context of the > famous 10,000 hour thing. (it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to > become proficient). If your "cycle time" for a job is an hour, it takes > a LONG time to accumulate the 10,000 hours (especially, if most of the > time is spent doing things like punching cards or reading greenbar > output listings.. That's not part of the "learning computer" stuff. On > the other hand, if you can make a change in a few lines with a text > editor (SOS on a DECWriter, I came to love you after I cast off the > shackles of an 029), run the program, and see what happens, proficiency > come that much faster. > > This is why I think things like ArduWulf or, more particularly LittleFE, > are valuable. And it's also why nobody should start packaging LittleFE > clusters in an enclosure. Once all those mobos are in a box with walls, > it starts to discourage random and rapid experimentation. If you put a > littleFE in a sealed box with an inventory tag and a "breaking this seal > voids warranty" and the only interface is the network jack or > keyboard/monitor, you might as well put a modern multicore mobo in > there and spin up VM instances. In this case, it's the very "assembled > in a garage" kind of look that prompts the willingness of someone to go > in and make some unauthorized changes, from which comes learning. > > The learning cluster has to be cheap enough (and, I think physically > portable) to be "owned" by a single person. Otherwise, it starts to be > "community, shared property", and subject to access restrictions. It > starts to look like significant capital equipment, with only authorized > service, compliance with corporate/institutional IT security rules: Do > you have all your patches up to date? Are you running the institutional > virus checker?. Do you have full disk encryption?
I had forgotten to plug this, but have a gander here: http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/ Cluster in a box, by one of our (Beowulf's) own. -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics, Inc. email: land...@scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com http://scalableinformatics.com/siflash phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ 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
