> Maybe big systems are headed the same way (I know we have discussed this > before). > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/15/amd_roadrunner_opteron_ocp_systems/ > > I guess the financial market is driving the design as they, well, buy a lot > of them!
I'm a bit mystified why these systems are interesting, except that they remove the middleman (dell/hp/ibm/etc). the hardware seems to be completely conventional (form-factor, power dissipation, config, etc). so the message seems to be: what's the use of TLA vendors when the servers are not just commoditized, but also appliance-like (plug-and-go)? > The other thought that has come into my head is that as the domestic market > for PCs dries up - being taken by the tablet market that's the media spin; I'm not sure the numbers/facts really support it. to what extent do tablets actually replace PCs? for media consumption, certainly, and for those classes of user whose "computer" use always was media-consumption (the email/browsing classes). for those whose computer was always really a workstation, I don't think tablets are changing anything. (it's easy to see why desktop sales might decrease, without desktops-as-workstations actually becoming obsolete: they last longer, so replacement cycles are stretching. no doubt helped by the rather long and comprehensive recession...) > With integrated cloud services then the Beowulf idea of building systems > from> tower PCs will be untenable in the future (*) again, I'm not so sure. tower systems were always a sort of dumpy way to build clusters, though sometimes cost-effective. I think it's mainly that rack systems have come down in price and that most people feel some pressure to obtain decent density for clusters (since an interesting cluster is a lot bigger now than 10 years ago.) > but we will be using the highest capacity commodity systems - which are > likely to be something like these cloud/virtualisation platforms. > Sorry if this thought is a bit muddled. but there's nothing new about these systems! _______________________________________________ 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
