Preaching to the choir
May. 24th, 2006 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylCouple of intersting sessions today. The site presentation from DKRZ was depressingly familiar. They mentioned that they'd seen a whole bunch of problems with Unitree and a whole bunch of crashes, the cause of which had yet to be diagnosed, and that GFS only really worked as long as nothing was changed. Had the delivery been only slightly livilier, I'd have been out of my seat, waving my arm above my head and shouting, "Testify, brother! Testify!"
Which more or less paved the way for Phil T's barnstorming speech where he stood up, kicked ass and took names. In a shocking lapse of the usual diplomacy, where you say how much you like the machine and then wheedle the conversation round to the point where you're bad mouthing stuff, he just came out and said what needed to be said: SUX is very dated and hasn't really changed since it was introduced in '90; that the compilers are substantially less than ideal and that the compiler group are more interested in a quiet life than actually improving their products. He also praised NEC Australia to the heavens and said that you apprechiated their job so much more when you saw all the crap they had to deal with from NEC Japan.
Actually, the best point from his talk — the one that didn't involve bad mouthing NEC — was the distinction between supercomputing and real time HPC. He said that supercomputing basically involved running one large job, whereas real time HPC involved running a complex job mix and having to worry about the precise start and end times of the jobs. Following his memetic onslaught, we all felt out mindsets shifting and went round calling ourselves real time HPC rather than supercomputing people. I'm actually one step ahead than some of the others — my business card already describes me as an HPC specialist.
Anyway, time to go and prepare for the gala dinner...
Which more or less paved the way for Phil T's barnstorming speech where he stood up, kicked ass and took names. In a shocking lapse of the usual diplomacy, where you say how much you like the machine and then wheedle the conversation round to the point where you're bad mouthing stuff, he just came out and said what needed to be said: SUX is very dated and hasn't really changed since it was introduced in '90; that the compilers are substantially less than ideal and that the compiler group are more interested in a quiet life than actually improving their products. He also praised NEC Australia to the heavens and said that you apprechiated their job so much more when you saw all the crap they had to deal with from NEC Japan.
Actually, the best point from his talk — the one that didn't involve bad mouthing NEC — was the distinction between supercomputing and real time HPC. He said that supercomputing basically involved running one large job, whereas real time HPC involved running a complex job mix and having to worry about the precise start and end times of the jobs. Following his memetic onslaught, we all felt out mindsets shifting and went round calling ourselves real time HPC rather than supercomputing people. I'm actually one step ahead than some of the others — my business card already describes me as an HPC specialist.
Anyway, time to go and prepare for the gala dinner...
