On 04/07/2011 11:03 AM, Chris Dagdigian wrote: > > The CycleComputing folks are good people in my book and I bet more than > a few are subscribed to this list. The founders are old-school Condor > gurus with a long track record in this field. > > One of the nice things about their work is how "usable" it is to real > people with real production computing requirements - in the IAAS cloud > space there are way too many marketing robots talking vague BS about > "cloud bursting", "hybrid clusters" and storage aggregation/access > across LAN/WAN distances. Cycle has built, deployed & delivered all of > this with (what I'd consider) a bare minimum of marketing and chest > thumping. > > It's not a PR gimmick and limiting the definition of "cluster" to only > systems that run parallel applications would alienate quite a few of us > on this list :) In the life sciences a typical cluster might run a > mixture of 80-90% serial jobs with a small scattering of real MPI apps > running alongside.
Do not confuse "scientific computing" or "high performance computing" with "cluster". All terms are definitely related, but you can do scientific/high-perfomance computing without a "cluster." As someone who also works in life sciences, I know that there are a lot of life science tasks that are embarrassingly parallel. Running these tasks on a bunch of different machines simultaneously is definitely scientific and high performance computing, but it doesn't necessarily require a cluster. Folding@home, for example. > > I get cynical about this stuff because in the cloud space you see way > too many commercial people promising the world without actually > delivering anything (other than carefully hand-managed reference account > projects) while the academic & supercomputing folks are all busy > presenting and bragging about things that will never see the light of > day after their thesis defense. Me, too, which is why I started ranting about Microsoft's cloud commercials in a separate thread. ;) It's also why I'm starting to get picky about how the term "cluster" is used. More and more, I see people confusing "cloud" with "cluster". I guess that cynicism is what caused me to reply to the original post. > > There are people like Cycle/Rightscale etc. etc. who actually rise above > the hype and deliver clever & usable stuff with a minimum of marketing BS. > > My $.02 of course > > -Chris > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > -- Prentice Bisbal Linux Software Support Specialist/System Administrator School of Natural Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
