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Microsoft Competes In Supercomputer Market
HoboMaster writes "Microsoft is releasing a public beta of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 in their first attempt to compete in the supercomputer OS market. Gates is planned to speak at the 2005 Supercomputer Conference, which will be Microsoft's first appearance at the conference. Gates, as always, has high hopes for this new version of Windows, even claiming it to be as powerful and easier to use than Linux."
so its super blue screen(s) of death
Normal is Boring!! http://www.dealwithdeals.com/
Windows *is* easier to use than Linux.
That said, Linux rocks Windows in every other arena.. security, stability, uptime, memory management, etc.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
"easier to use than Linux"
Yes? Where is the part about the high hopes for this operating system?
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of BSOD's and Windows EULA's.
No thanks. I don't think they will get very far here, certainly not in the main computing nodes (maybe for peripheral nodes, but not in the heart of the cluster).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think he might own some Microsoft stock.
... well for me, it was clusterfuck.
But, how much will it cost?
And I can bet it won't be included with their client systems.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Can he be serious?
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
Why crashing a windows server when you can crash a complete cluster. Great idea!
As someone who works in the high-performance computer industry I find this laughable. It's one thing to argue the merits of Windows on the desktop enviroment...but on clusters...are you kidding me? This is a non-story.
I get my ass kicked, but I compete.
Supercomputers aren't about "Ease of use." They're about speed per dollar. When WCC can beat Linux on price/performance, then people will stand up and take notice. Not before.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
"Windows, even claiming it to be as powerful and easier to use than Linux" Easier to use for a M$-techwiz or for a Linux wiz?
The Opteron AMD processor is going into CRAY Supercomputers, so it only makes sense that Microsoft start making Windows for those AMD computers. What's next, a Beowulf cluster of Bill Gates?
Oh You POS
Now you can tackle "cluster.log" corruption issue on failovers!
I've read many times here that having Linux in the top500 supercomputers list was not worth marketing because it is a niche. Now Microsoft is marketing a beta of what they dream might enter someday this list. Go figure ...
Is it just me or are we going to see the biggest peice of bloatware ever produced?? Microsoft can't get it right on the desktop, how do you expect "WINDOWS" to work clustered.... Anyways I have a crisp $10 bill that says its going to be a flop in the market.
he's actually claiming it's *as powerful* as linux!? why should that interest anyone, unless it's also as free?
... as we'll undoubtedly need a cluster to actually run Vista.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
even claiming it to be as powerful and easier to use than Linux.
I find Linux ease of use to be perfectly acceptable, and since they are not claiming better performance, I don't see an advantage.
The NY Times has this article. The opening paragraphs were a bit more intriguing:
"In January a group of Microsoft researchers set out to discover how much computing power they could buy for less than $4,000 at a standard online retailer. They found the answer at NewEgg.com, where they were able to purchase - for just $3,632 - 9.5 gigaflops of computing speed. That is the amount of computing power offered by a Cray Y-MP supercomputer in 1991 at a cost of $40 million."
The question is, how much will your average cluster be spending on Norton as a result of this?
that could make one...soooooo deluuuuusional? Do we see Radio Flyer entering their wagons in the Indianapolis 500? KMart renting a space at Fashion Island mall? Weekly World News reporters showing up at the Nobel Literature Awards "just in case they win"?
I'll bet the spammers are already drooling at the potential of installing a rootkit on one of these babies.
Will the supercomputer have a GUI? And will each node be required to run a GUI? That's one thing that I never liked about windows. Even your webserver and database servers have to waste resources running a GUI, even though it's perfectly possible to run such machines without a gui.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Cool, but does it run Linux?
Also make it use less than 32MB of RAM; right now XP sucks about 128MB RAM just to run Windows.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
"even claiming it to be as powerful and easier to use than Linux."
Gates is also authoring a new book called "Supercomputing For Dummies", for all those super-computer admins who are frightened by command prompts.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Have you seen the system requirements for Vista?
Does this version continue to use share nothing and thus useful be mostly for high availablity? Or can resources now be shared concurrently between different nodes of the cluster and thus provide better performance?
Nothing says "Product of the Future" like the beta version of a product named "Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003".
Sure, they're doing it to maintain the "2003" branding of the flagship server. But why, less than two months before the end of 2005, are they not even trying to sound modern?
Let us remember that much of Microsoft's revenue comes from the entire server/enterprise category, so it's no surprise Microsoft is going on the offensive and trying to compete with the power of Linux servers. Microsoft may act like its not scared, but clearly they are at least worried about the growing competition of Linux... especially if they always have to remind us how much "better (enter microsoft product here) is better than Linux."
I have to say, I just don't think developers will go for it. First of all, if you're setting up a cluster of, say, 20 machines to run some MPI programs, you're going to be funneling some serious coin microsoft's way.
Secondly, I, like many developers, have been running MPI programs on Linux clusters for some time now. What's my incentive to switch? All I've got is penalties, like having to buy software and stuff. MPI is already free, open source software. So now MS sticks it in their OS and sell it as a new platform?
At least for me, this is too little, too late. I'll do what I've been doing, which is run my parallel code on Linux.
And if my grandmother had wheels she would be a trolley.
bottom line is, until microsoft can build this OS to be HUGELY FASTER than linux, there's no reason to pay extra for something that doesn't have any speed advantages.
i've never heard of the supercomputing crowd complaining about ease of use, they are looking for more calculations for less money, and for that linux/unix is probably still the best choice. there's no reason to pay thousands for an OS that doesn't increase your performance any further than an OS that costs $0
Puppy Linux makes a joke out of WinXP because it's smaller? If thats the case my DOS boot-disk makes a joke out of the Puppy Linux Distro.
With large high performance clusters, and even small ones if you're smart about it, it doesn't matter at all how big or small your installation media is. It's about automating the installations of your compute nodes as much as possible. For example with Rocks, you just pxe boot or pop in the install cd and the cluster nodes intall themselves completely hands off. Other solutions don't even require the compute nodes to have a hard drive (Oscar springs to mind). I'd fully expect the Microsoft solution to be similar. They'd be absolute morons to try and market something that wasn't. Of course the thing I wonder about is how the pricing will work, and how they expect to make it work if they charge you for each machine in your cluster. I mean, why would you pay one hundred dollars a node for hundred nodes when you could install Linux on each machine for free?
Free will is just an illusion
$1 million for this semi-supercomputer running the tried and tested server operating system Linux, under an open source license. Or $2 million for the same supercomputer running a server variant of the popular desktop operating system Windows, same performance, assuming advertisements don't lie, and under a license which limits the possibility of tweaking. Which will the client choose?
Really? I've only just started switching from Windows to Linux, I have a dual boot Windows XP Pro\Linux Ubuntu machine, the one and only problem I've had is connecting to the internet via my wireless card.
My brother had exactly the same problem on his Windows PC, i.e we can both see the WAN, but can't connect to the internet via the router. He solved his problem before I started installing Ubuntu, so the two arn't related, but Windows is far from perfect, and Linux is far from the disaster you paint it as.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Hi Bill,
How about you develop a "Super Windows"(TM) for normal PCs instead?
Why a Windows for Supercomputer? Because they make superior bot nets?
These are just some questions
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I'm sure Microsoft will do what it always does, and cheat.
Bill and Steve will see to it that a high-profile research centre (e.g. a university) will get a free supercomputer with a free Supercomputer Edition(TM) of Windows(TM) to play with and there will be much fanfare and positive publicity in the press.
Just like when SGI and intel gave NASA a free 10240-processor Altix (made of itanics).
Stick Men
Any ex-military folks know what a complete cluster is. You know, a complete cluster f**k?
Who says there's no entertainment in advertising?
The difference is where supercomputing matters - areas of science and engineering - are dominated mostly by Linux but also have contendors in Windows.
(Engineering is highlighted because that is my area of expertise - company I work for does high fidelity simulation in both Linux and Windows... but few if any companies in the engineering world work under OS X)
-everphilski-
The Puppy Linux distro makes an absolute joke of Windows XP....
Since when is another OS required for Windows to be joke?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've had more success with usb and audio under linux than on windows. Sounds to me like you don't know what you are talking about. Use a distro designed for the desktop like Fedora, Ubuntu, or Mandriva.
Regards,
Steve
A fast computer that isnt usable is useless. Like a fast car that isn't street legal.
If Microsoft can make inroads into newer supercomputing arenas with newer people who don't want to learn Linux, etc... they may have a market. I say it half sarcastically because I agree with you, yet I can see where Microsoft is taking this.
-everphilski-
Blue Screens Per Second
Indeed, Puppy Linux gave my old 128 mb USB pen a newc lease of life, I now have an entirely portable operating system and It means I can still get work done if my uni network goes down (as is frequently the case).
;)
I'm sure running your own OS would be a breach of our 'terms of use' for using the uni computers, but I don't think they thought about it when writing them
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
A year ago Apple computers made number 7 it the top list of supercomputers http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2004&M=11 the story of them losing ground when they were higher is http://www.macnn.com/articles/04/11/08/vt.falls.to .7th/
If I wanted to go with the easiest computer operating system to use, that is heavy on graphical user interface, I would pick a Mac. It said in the ranking list: "System X 1100 Dual 2.3 GHz Apple XServe/Mellanox Infiniband 4X/Cisco GigE / 2200 Self-made"
Got to go.
...when one BSOD is not enough...
...why settle for one BSOD when you can get a whole cluster of them...
oh, btw... does MS magnificent cluster server still have swithover times measured in seconds ?
--
Disclaimer: I don't like Microsoft and I hate both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and I am not ashamed of it...
thx. for your time.
If you have a windows admin worth his salt, the overhead of the GUI is negligible, and the benefit of the GUI (being able to remote desktop in or switch the KVM to use good graphical tools that help you solve problems quicker. Like it or not there are good graphical tools when used with good console tools that can help you solve problems quickly) is irreplaceable.
-everphilski-
So Is Sony
With this relase MS also stated that only half of the computing power will be available. Half will be needed simply to run the Operating System itslef, one processor will be needed for every processor managed.
1. PHB sees Microsoft adverspamming for Windows Computer Cluster 2003, and believes the drivel. ...
2. PHB makes case to execs, gets capital for an 80-node WCC2K3 cluster for eleventy billion dollars, thanks to Licensing 7.
3. Admins shake their heads in disdain, get the thing running, and walk away.
4. Developers waste time and resources reinventing the wheel.
5. Nodes start to get rooted because the admins didn't harden the system.
6. Organized crime groups use nodes to DDoS websites in the name of extortion.
7.
8. Profit! (for Microsoft, at least).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The nonsense comments about the overhead of a GUI are retarded. Who cares if less than a fraction of 1% of my system is being used by something I don't care about? It simply doesn't matter.
However, there is no upside to a GUI. It offers a way for developers to write software that is difficult and time consuming to administer, and requires a much better connection for remote administration than ssh does. I have never found a single graphical tool that helps me admin anything, they are always a pain.
Pray they don't 'embrace' MPI and cripple it beyond rational sense and then stuff it down vendors' throats as a 'standard'...
It's not the OS. Most of the computing power in a cluster goes to communication between the nodes in the cluster. That's true of any operating system you put on it.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
A standard line from Bill, "wait till you see Vista its better", "wait till you see compute its faster".
Amazingly the press continue to take Microsoft at face value on annoucing their version as better when they don't release what they announce.
So sure MS is better at supercomputers... I mean they have such a history in it, just look at the top 500 its just littered with MS boxes.
This isn't Windows v Linux, this is MS Research v IBM Research. The people behind the CPU, Relational databases, reliable messaging and of course the huge amount of work on massively scalable computers. If MS had real ability they'd be working with the big processing boys from the goverment and weather prediction areas.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it. this is better known as the WEAK Anthropic principle
You never catch me alive
Am I the only one that misread that, at first?
;)
I could have sworn it actually read, "Microsoft Complete Cluster F**k Server 2003"
And, if you think about it... my misinterpretation might actually be closer to the truth.
/dev/random
Man, I'd like to see a Microsoft-Windows-Compute-Server-2003 cluster of THOSE!
Nah, nevermind. Just doesn't have the same sort of 'ring' to it.
WOW, image how much spam mail those babies will be able to kick out!!!
How cool it would be to see all these virusses take all the processor time.. Can you imagine how it is to see a DOS attack with a chain of 1000 clusters?
My first thoughts when I read this, where that Vista is going to really raise the bar for running requirements. Reality then asserted itself.
GCS/S d-x s+(+): a C++++$ UL+$ P+ L++$ !E--- W++@ N++>$ !o !K-- w++$ !O !M !V PS++>$ PE !Y PGP+ t+ 5++ X++ R tv b
I'm sure running your own OS would be a breach of our 'terms of use' for using the uni computers, but I don't think they thought about it when writing them
0MFG!!1!1! U R t3h t0t@l H@xX0r d00d! K33p r@g1ng agA1nsT teh M@cH!N3!!!!!!
ComputeCycleDelay, default value 4 microseconds.
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
And they're so easy ten year old kids in pakistan can be certified to run these windows botnets.
And more evidence they're easy to use - you don't even need to buy or own the machine to run a windows botnet.
The above points are serious - Windows clusters fine (as proven by the botnets) and is easy enough (as proven by the ten year old script kiddies).
The real reason they're nowhere in supercomputing is because often a supercomputer will have custom components (interconnects, etc) and without a large pool of people familiar with the source (like Linux has) you can't take advantage of your hardware.
Also, no one in their right mind will pay > $0 for an OS on 1000+ compute nodes - where the *entire* responsibility of the OS is to stay out of the way. You certainly don't need DirectY or Clippy running on your compute node; and Windows really has nothing to offer beyond Linux/BSD/anything that might be relevant on a compute node..
But at least Bill Gates does not claim that Windows Clusters are as good as VMS Clusters. That would be another 20 years of software development.
h ashes/
Computer Center: We just installed Windows 2003 on our supercomputer cluster.
Alt.2600: We just "bought" a supercomputer cluster for $30.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/10/password_
It looked to me like "Microsoft competes in Supermarket"
I really hoped to see an article about $25 copies of Windows at the check-out asile--right between the pulp gossip magazines and the kids-eye-level candy.
Seemed like it might be their best marketing scheme ever--skip anyone who knows anything about computers and go straight for small chlidren and people who are impressed with Tabloids.
The only problem i see with running windows pcs on supercomputers is the fact you need to reboot the damn thing anytime either a) it breaks b) it needs an upgrade software/hardware.
130 comments in and only one lame "Beowulf cluster" joke...
... the key words I look for are "Windows Public Beta"
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Personally I think there is a big difference between entering and competing in the market.
Bill Gates is scheduled to give the keynote at the Supercomputing 2005 (or SC05) conference, which is going on right now.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Did anybody here paint linux as a bad thing?? That user may be excused.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
The world's biggest trojan attack platform!
This is great news, I've always had difficulty interfacing with my supercomputer. Now even Aunt Tilly will be able to run simulations of nuclear explosions!
There is a defining moment in every great empire where it starts to decline. Seriously guys, this could be it. Xbox 360 and Media Centre are reasonably o.k. moves for Microsoft. Not great moves, Xbox was a huge loss for Microsoft, but this really does seem foolhardy. I liked the quote from the Register...
Speaking without apparent irony Muglia said: "We've spent some time talking to Independent Software Vendors recently and the software community welcomes the arrival of a consistent environment to this area."
hilarious.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
A lot of people seem to know better than the rest of us by saying that Microsoft is entering a business with too little, too late and God knows what.
Remember when Microsoft went to war with Sony and Nintendo? A lot of people said it was a dumb move and that Microsoft would basically get kicked out by Sony. Look what happened, now they seem to put Sony at risk. Instead of being behind, they're AHEAD.
I'm not a big MS fan but I hate it when people seem to neglect the fact that Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world because they've been doing the best job so far. Obviously, since they are in the lead. And please don't flame me on this one, I prefer Linux but I don't see my dad and my sister using Linux anytime soon.
Point is, Microsoft ain't going into this market without a serious plan.
Full Tilt
It's the army of bicycling paper clips, ready to do my bidding, that I look forward to.
... oh, never mind.
I, for one, welcome our
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Seriously, how much "easier" will it be at the cluster level? With Linux, you don't even have to install the OS on the hard drive. It can run off of a CD.
At this level, the extra wizards and such just don't matter.
Perhaps I should clarify for your benifit; had they thought of it, I'm sure taht my uni would have put somthing in about using your own operating system in the terms of use of the network, however I don't think they ever though anyone would do such a thing, hence they forgot, or deemed it unnessary. So I'm not *tries to decypher AOL speek* "raging against the machine", nor am I breaking any rules, just using a usefll tool in the form of puppy linux to keep my uni computers usefull after having Win 2000 with a bunch of restrictions installed on them. The initial statemen was also slightly tounge in cheek, but you obviously failed to notice that. --posting AC because it's way off topic now.
The main issue about using windows for supercomputer technology is the flexability to custom build the kernel the chipset.
No matter what ms does it wont compete against the computations of a custom built kernel like linux offers for that specific chipset.
Other then that the macrokernel model with its blaitently lame design will never hold up against a monolithic design, or even a modular linux kernel.
It better dang well not be the MicroComputer ..
My initial reaction was, didn't they already have supercomputers? Why is it labled 2003 when we are 47 days from 2006?
An excellent use for these MS supercomputers is to host xbox MMORPGs that enable 10 million players at a time reenacting the opening fight scene from Lord of the Rings: FOTR. Each player will run towards the center, clash, fight and most likely die within the first 30 seconds of gameplay.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Now we get to have clippy bugging our scientists. I'm sure they'll love having to click "Just start predicting the weather" every time they launch Microsoft Weather 2003.
Other solutions don't even require the compute nodes to have a hard drive (Oscar springs to mind). I'd fully expect the Microsoft solution to be similar.
This brings to mind one of my favourite MS stories.
Circa 1996, the company I worked for was transitioning a customer's LAN from Netware to Win95 (it wasn't our idea.) The clients were all diskless workstations, running from a single file server. The customer didn't want to buy new hardware, and MS told us that it was possible to do diskless booting with 95.
After fighting with their network for over a week, MS decided that it wasn't possible, because the workstations had floppy drives. "That's not a diskless workstation! It's impossible for them to boot if they have a floppy drive!" (ignoring, of course, that the same hardware had been running flawlessly with Netware for the previous three years.)
I can see them selling these cluser 'solution' licenses to some hapless university, then saying "Hey! Your nodes [don't] have hard drives - that's an unsupported configuration. Sorry, no refunds."
Gates seems to have forgotten the audience in this case
You underestimate the intelligence of the people at Microsoft. They want to create a new market targeted toward a different kind of people, those who would not normally use a supercomputer because of the technical difficulties. It's kind of like the way the GUI opened up computing to a lot of people who found a command line interface daunting, to say the least.
Security issues are irrelevant in a lot of cases. Scientific computing isn't done on computers attached to the internet...it is done on intranets consisting of specialized hardware streamlined for the needs of HPC. Most HPC programs don't even attach themselves to ethernet networks, but rather to things like Myrinet (bypass OS calls to reduce overhead GREATLY) that are intended for HPC. Being DDoS'd, or having a 'zombie cluster' etc are not really issues here.
I think the advantage of a MS solution might be ease-of-use, especially in server clusters that are up for hire (that is, up for timesharing). If you are some group performing research that requries lots of power but aren't focused in a CS-related field, you may not have the resources to go use the (often arcane) parallel (MPI) debuggers etc. and churn out a top-grade program for a supercomputer. An MS solution might indeed be cheaper OVERALL because of time-to-solution (time = money). Let's face it, VS.NET is a dream to code in - compared to other well-featured IDE's like Eclipse, it is light-weight, easier to use (Eclipse has major bloat issues), etc. So who knows - as the article mentions, it might indeed become part of an end-to-end scientific process, where the computational parts seamlessly fit in.
Furthermore, everyone who is talking about licenses per processor are not thinking properly...do you really think they would achieve penetration with the barrier to using the software so high? Of course not! Instead of speculating negatively, let's just wait and see what the licensing programs are when the product is released.
My 2 cents
>Microsoft Competes In Supercomputer Market
I think you mispelled 'Fails To Compete'.
Bragging rights, mindshare, the integrated environment and all sorts of various marketing reasons. MS wants to be the computer system for all uses and users from gaming consoles and cellphones to super computers. And they certainly have enough money to try. I haven't looked, but bet their advertising budget is higher than the gross income for all the linux distros and apps. And if it isn't they could make it so tomorrow and not break sweat. Not saying it is wise, or warranted, but they have the proven ability to extract cash from society like no other single company ever has before.
"poses" is spelled
P-O-S-E-S
not C-O-M-P-E-T-E- S
that's an entirely different word, and I think the meanings are still different too.
>>When I bring hardware home, it works! Try getting those wireless usb devices working in Linux. Possible, sure! Do you just plug it in the slot and put in the CD and it works, not *even* close. Audio on Linux? You've got to be fucking kidding me. What fantasy world does the poster live in where Linux is easier to use than Windows?
What fantasy world do you live in where installing Windows and several additional third-party drivers is "easy"? At least with linux, you can generally avoid most of the driver installs -- they are included in the kernel, and are found automatically, but you might need to tweak a couple things before they work (or work perfectly). I'm amazed when I watch friends talk about Linux being difficult to use, meanwhile they'll spend hours reloading windows (and drivers, etc.) every couple months, if not more often.
More frustrating, if that's the right word, is that people complain about how "difficult" it is to research/make fixes for Linux, but don't even try to fix problems in Windows, opting for a reinstall instead. Kind of an apples and oranges thing, when you think about it.
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
This Windows cluster reminds me of the TK-2000, a Brazilian Apple IIc clone that wasn't even compatible with the IIc. It was marketed to professionals and small businesses as "a business computer with a professional keyboard". On the other hand, the keyboard had two big and prominent keys labeled FIRE. So much for professionalism.
A cluster of Windows machines! That crash should be spectacular!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Finally a slashdot story where no one can possible imagine a beowolf cluster of these.
Microsoft's NEW Cluster EULA:
Cluster Home Edition: 5 node max
Cluster Professional Edition: 10 node max
Cluster Server Edition: 10 nodes starting at $10,000. $1000 for each additional node.
A bargin at any price...
Regardless of what the folks who actually use the supercomputer want, there's always this administrator who signs off on the purchase who will say 'Windows, huh? Great. Now we can have one support contract that covers everything!'. The M$ Sales Rep takes him/her out to a couple fancy lunches and comes back with a signed contract.
FORTRAN was invented because people spent too much time debugging programs on those expensive computers. If a FORTRAN program was half as efficient as machine code, but the machine code program spent 90% of its time being developed and debugged, the FORTRAN program did roughly five times the work (50% vs 10%).
Now whether Bill's wet dreams work out is another question altogether. He may get a few piddling sales because of heavy discounts for bragging rights, but centers with gazillion node supercomputers can easily devote a few of those nodes for development and leave 99% of them for the finished programs. Visual Basic won't have much to offer in that case.
Infuriate left and right
...when you need to run MS Word really, really fast.
Does this mean that he is admitting that Linux is more powerful than Windows?
So, this is the same sort of distributed computing used for years for SETI@Home, etc., presumably with a nicer interface and software to facilitate scheduling remote processes with pooled results.
... I just woke up and checked Slashdot... Have I been sleeping so long its now April Fool's Day?
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
M$ Always a day late dollar sho... wait a min..
BS Per Second?
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
There are a few features which Microsoft would have to implement on any OS targetted at cluster computing. Many are not directly within their control.
First, and most important for users, what would be the APIs provided. Would Microsoft package MPI? PVM? Would they use a proprietary technology? XML based technologies are way too heavy for this application.
Second, what interconnect transports would be provided? VIA, Globus, IB, good old stinky rsh encapsulation? What about independent vendors like Myricom and Dolphin? Would these companies be willing to support a substantially different architecture? Would there be enough customer demand for them to support Compute Cluster Server at the outset (MPICH-GM is old old old for Windows, Dolphonics and Scali are pretty well exclusively LINUX)?
Third, what software will Microsoft be providing for remote batch management? You'd need a secure remote shell, good scripting functionality, non-GUI device management, etc.
Lastly, how suitable is the NT kernel to doing this sort of work? VMS was ahead of basically everyone when it came to clustering technology, yet _nobody_ uses or used it for parallel processing. What are the lessons that can be applied to NT?
There are a few clusters built on NT, but most of the ones mentioned on the Beowulf mailing list (and they are few) are networks of workstations with CONDOR installed which do double duty as computer clusters at night.
Who cares if a supercomputer OS is easy to use? The only thing people that use supercomputers care about is speed. Other things supercomputer users care about is compiler efficiency (again for speed.) I don't see Visual Studio cranking out the efficient executables. I'm also quite sure the Joe Schmoe Ph.D in CS, CEE and Physics does not care if an eight year old can navagate the user interface. But he does care whether or not it takes the computer 2 weeks, or 3 months to model galaxy formation. Especially when he knows that there are 7 other teams that just got the same new information from the same conference and are all racing to publish their newest findings.
Microsoft Doesn't Compete in Supercomputer Market?
[lots of xboxes] + [freenetwork that everyone with broadband is likely to use] + [redmond supercomputing r&d] = skynet
Sure, there would be lots of latency, but with the projected install base...makes for one bbmf(tm) of a distributed net. Each of the boxes will be nearly identical and will includeh an OS that could be tweaked remotely and across all nodes without much hassle, sounds good for engineering a distributed net, yea?
How will one know that when updateing a live account, or downloading new content you are not sending the next piece of the puzzle? What if the games include pieces of the program distributed, compiled and redistributed by the live master control like the Joker's happy fun chemicals in the first Burton/Batman movie? They control the sdk, the compiler, the box, the final review of the code, the networking, why not use all the gear to compute big stuff(tm)? Let consumers buy and build your Xmillion node grid? Sic!
Yes, that last bit (or the whole bit) makes some serious and likely fubar assumptions about how/if/what the whole idea works. Yes, this is another cracked out late night post of consipiracys and ill-informed crap. However, I am sure that more level headed chaps could trip out on the idea and see if it is technically possible. And if something is technically possible...
[mumble]...ill trip on that trying to sleep tonight...mislead about foil hats...skynet in my living room...robot reservation...[yawn]|plastic....or gasoline?|
Sure, you got it quite right. A computer that's useful for a scientist has tools that can find the eigenvectors of a matrix, calculate the positions of planets in the solar system, solve the Navier-Stokes equation to plot the shock waves around a supersonic wing. Exactly the kind of problems which are so easy to solve using Microsoft Windows...
1991 to today is 14 years, or 9.33 cycles or Moore's law. 40 Mill, halved 10 times is $39,062.50. Since the article is talking about hardware for under $4k, the price is about a tenth of what was predicted.
I'm not drawing any conclusions, just pointing this out.
plus-good, double-plus-good
I think everyone here is missing the point.
This software is for biologists, chemists, and other scientists who don't have a damned clue what a shell script is, much less NFS, etc.
I work to support local users on a school supercomputer, and they don't have a clue of what's going on 90% of the time.
All they know is that they want software X run with parameter Y1-Y100 done Z number of times. They don't want to spend precious research time figuring out the computer systems.
This software is for a biologist who wants to buy a small cluster, plug it in, install his software, and run. No configuration, zero administration. Eliminating the need for the computer illiterate to have a sysadmin to run a cluster; THAT is the power of Microsoft's software.
That said, as a computer literate person, I wouldn't dream of installing Windows on a cluster; Linux and the OSG is the only way to go.
but you're in for a rude awakening.
Average is dumb
does not compute. does not compute. does not compute.
How do you get supercomputer performance from something that can't run without running a GUI? 50% of your available processor time is spent running processes that are NEVER used. Oh yeah - I forgot - everyone administers their clusters by hooking a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to each node and clicking start->settings->control panel
...a beowolf cluster of shit !!
NOT!
How these guys buy their way into conferences they have no right being at is beyond me. Let alone marketing...I mean speaking/presenting at them. I pity the fools who have to attend Gates speach because their bosses told them to.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
oh, I am sorry.
I meant, I am in awe regarding this pivital moment in computing history
we will all want to remember where we were, when we heard about this momentus occasion.
I can see it now...
.SUPERCOMPUTE, and proceeds to throw together a quick application, just to show how easy it is: drop in an atmospheric grid-lattice form, stick in a time-series forward-differencing control here, quick call to a 3D visualization class there, top it off with a seasoning of atomic isotope models, and he's got a complete working app that simulates a nuclear bomb explosion, while disproving global warming at the same time, all in the space of 10 minutes.
Bill Gates gets up on stage, pulls up the latest edition of Visual Basic
IBM has proven with their custom Blue Gene OS that a minimal, focused and efficient operating system trumps the notorious bloat and pack-in that every modern Microsoft OS has been known for. Try and think back to the last time you've described any product in the Windows Family as "lean". IBM has also been very keen on Linux, tailoring it to Blue Gene's I/O nodes. Therein lies the beauty of custom operating systems and highly customizable operating systems, two arenas where Microsoft just can't compete. You can get what you want with as little overhead as possible.
I wonder what a super-crash is like? Or a super-blue screen? Or a super-corrupted registry? Or super-bloat?
HPC can perform incredible analytics on databases... Think more along the lines of Clippy saying, "Would you like to analyze performance of all the companies in the Pacific Rim only or the entire world?"
Or perhaps distributed, server side code for web services??
Microsoft aren't stupid or paranoid, or at least they can see what's bleedingly obvious, which is that Windows can't compete in the supercomputer space. Not now, but what of the future? CPU designers, with shrinking geometries, are running out of room to manoeuvre, so are looking to parallelism for future growth. Windows needs to get into the cluster space now, otherwise in 5 years time, they'll find themselves out of the market.
Having an OS named after a GUI paradigm is just a little silly in a HPC environment.
Maybe it's time for Microsoft to come up with a new name for its OS in this space?
I suppose they couldn't buy up IBM to get hold of the title could they and find out how to design serverware by finding loads of machines running Unix and Linux and st...
Nahhh to fanciful.
What I can't understand is why they bother. The bloody servers they have now can't even handle their own groups. After all these years you still can't post from Word to their own communities without looking a right NOBR
Okay, ill admit to a round of buzzword bingo :
There is an OS paradigm shift looming.
With the incorporation of "virtualization features" in the next round of x86 cores from both intel and AMD, the two-layer software world (OS / userland) of the last 40 years is complemented by a third "virtualization layer" at the SW/HW boundary.
This means that with the next OS-Upgrade that supports this virtualization, every corporate desktop is able to run several instances of one or several OSs with a high degree of isolation.
This mean Joe Beancounter at GM Headquarters can pop a Britney Spears CD from sony with a rootkit into a CD-Drive, catch a virus and begin to spread SPAM through GMs fat pipe to the world, while a tiny slice of the crash test simulation for the new Cadillac is running on the spare cycles on his desktop completely undangered from virtual bluescreens and reboots.
Of course, Linux could do this just as easily as Windows, but how many identically configured linux desktops does GM run ?
When GM rolls out Windows Vista, in, say, three to five years time to 100.000 Desktops, they get a 100.000 node cluster thrown in for free.
It is available with 80% capacity 8 hours a day and 100% capacity for 16 hours a day plus weekends.
Okay, it is very loosely coupled, and thus much less effective than a dedicated cluster, but I guess that for a lot of applications it would be more powerful than a 20.000 node dedicated cluster.
So this would be a $40 million machine for basically free.
All GM would have to do is start porting one of its apps to the new architecture now.
And of course the savings would look even better for underfunded universities.
I think that if "Windows HPC OS" is included in the "virtualization support" in each Windows Vista OS, and they do a decent job of implementing the application deployment and data distribution, Microsoft stands a good chance of getting a hold in the market.
Win-don'ts... Doze? ... I give up.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
you rock!
They want to create a new market targeted toward a different kind of people
Windows has, believe it or not, already got a large customer that would be able to use his malware. The US Navy. I remember reading about it ages ago. (No links though.)
I think their OS is going to be called "Portholes". Apparently they got the contract when George Bush found out about Windows and Open Source.
He thought the ships would be safer with them closed.
"Microsoft Competes In Supercomputer Market"
Didn't know it was april yet...
I do. This isn't microsoft's first try at this. I expect similar results
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
Supercomputing Cluster....all Apple G5's
get.a.clue
> in their first attempt to compete in the supercomputer OS market.
David Spade: I liked this OS better the first time...when it was called Windows NT.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Microsoft Competes in Supermarket Computer...
Ballmer throws a chair across the room and says
"I am going to bury Blue Gene, I have done it before......"
MS needs to get a clue.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
I know people think Gates is a genius in some circles but does it take a rocket scientist to throw a brick through a glass window in the middle of a riot?
ANYTHING is easier to use than linux. Good job Gates, way to make a revolutionizing prediction, or as I would rather think about it - way to state the obvious there jackass.
mod points pls?
"Some people are like slinkies. They are really good for nothing, but still bring a smile to your face when pushed down a flight of stairs.
-1336.5
"What we see as a key trend here is that we will have supercomputers of all sizes, including ones that will cost less than $10,000 and be able to sit at your desk or in a department," Gates said.
;)
that's so much crap, the trend is to have thin clients, to have WEB apps instead of bulky software Let's keep the supercomputers for the scientists and the desktops for the average consumer...
I mean, if the trend is for supercomputers under my desk, why the fuck is Microsoft releasing Windows and Office LIVE ?
This: And that means that those universities are going to have rewrite their custom apps at great expense. I can't see it. I simply can't see how MS can reasonably strong arm anyone, corporate, governmental or university, into taking on a supercomputer variant of Windows.
And even if MS were so compelled, what really is in it for Redmond? It's probably the smallest market in the world, with a customer base measured in the thousands, is the kind of thinking that put IBM where it is today.
One day everyone will want a deskbesides PCC. They were about one and a half times the height and twice the base area of a standard ATX case ICIRC the picture of the one I was last drooling over. But that was many moons ago.
They'll be a lot smaller by now. A lot. And probably even more powerful and cheaper too. They may even have cured the bloody awful noise on it.
OOH! And they weren't utilising physics and graphics card potentials then, too neither...
"Ooo..mmmm clusters..."
Yes, this product will include MPI and a suite of cluster management tools.
As someone who actually works in this area, I don't see this as much weirder than Apple's offering. In particular since small scientific computing clusters tend to run one job at a time, Windows' relatively poor multiprocessing capabilities won't be such a loss.
I'm not a big Windows fan (I run Linux and OS X at home and I write Linux drivers for a living) but I can see where a Windows oriented IT department would see this sort of thing as a win - they can set up the kind of cluster that their internal customers want without having to learn one of them there communist operating systems.
Actually the more I think about this the more I see it as a response to Apple's Xgrid and Workgroup clustering solutions than an attempt to break into the Top 500 list.
Clear, Dark Skies
I thought BSPS was a measure of Microsoft's public relations staff. Like the BSPS goes up whenever there's an astroturf TCO article.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
With Linux, you don't even have to install the OS on the hard drive. It can run off of a CD.
As Snagglepuss would say:
It can run off a network, even
Time for Windows to exit, stage left!
Coderz 4 Life
Yes, and my mom has been saying for the longest time how she wants to operate a supercomputer. Several mom and pops can now own and operate super computers too.
Again, i think the original writer was correct. Supercomputers are for enterprises and government agencies. Even some medium size businesses would have a cluster. But they all have a fulltime sys admin. And if the extent of that sys admins abilities is just a MCSE cert, then god help your company when the latest exploit hits.
Also, keep in mind that if this is using a Windows interface (rather than a shell prompt), it is using easily 3X the resources that a Linux machine without X-windows installed would.
Finally, since when has a first version of of any Microsoft product worked great?? There is a reason why everyone waits til the third edition to really adopt a Microsoft product. But in this case, they are fighting an uphill battle against something that is more scalable, faster, more stable and cheaper by far. Plus it's been tested time and time again.
If Windows could handle the load (and if Microsoft was worth it's salt as an server OS), they would stop using Linux to do all their load bearing. The day Windows cluster appears in the top 10 supercomputers is the day George Bush comes out of the closet, marries Dick Cheney and decides to become an atheist.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
K Menu -> Control Center -> Peripherals -> Mouse -> Single Click to open Files and folders.
I've always liked the fact that KDE is so customizable. Right now, I have 4 panels, and Screen Fliping enabled (for virtual desktops), and both of those features are unique to linux, so I dont know why people accuse KDE of having no original ideas, and for cloning windows.
/cue music
Everyone sing along
It's the end of the world as we know it...
I'd prefer a cluster of ColecoVisions!
One would think that needing to reboot your supercomputer every couple days might not be the best selling point.
To maintain the monopoly, Microsoft must maintain their mindshare. "Most of the world's supercomputers run Linux" raises questions in John Q's mind, and might sew the seed of future rebellion. Linux must have no stronghold ANYWHERE or you can't keep the masses ignorant.
What kind of performance is your Microsoft Cluster really going to get when all your nodes are running a 3D Pipes screen saver...
The problem is, most of the cluster nodes are likely absent graphics cards, keyboards, and mice. So how do you even boot/configure your "Microsoft Cluster"?
A windows supercluster? You do know who this is going to make very happy? Yup the porn,online gambling and the russian mob spyware/malware industry.
If Windows wants to get in the HPC market, they should start by offering a fortran compiler. Lahey has one for Windows, but for a native UNIX user, the instructions on how to use it on Windows were just about incomprehensible. Strangely, for HPC, Linux, AIX and other UNIX systems are probably much easier to use. And I doubt windows binaries would be as fast anyhow.
They spent billions to make a new Windows which turned out to need a supercomputer to run, and now they are desperately trying to find customers.
Great! Now you can be annoyed by the paperclip 1000000x faster!!
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 will also give "GigaFLOP" a new meaning.
Why would MS want to market a supercomputer OS?
Because they had to build one anyway; they may as well see if they can sell it.
Google is kicking their asses in the cloud-of-services arena, and its doing that on the basis of a 200,000 server farm.
MS is looking to defray their catch-up costs.
MS had a joint venture with Unisys a while back. They loaded a 32 proc cluster of Itanium2's with the Windoze server OS and _donated_ it to my institution for Bioinformatics research. Well, the machine sat for the longest time unused because _none_ of the HPC people in my _entire_ University wanted to use it. Eventually, they partitioned the system and loaded Linux using 16 of the procs. And...people started using it.
I think it's prediction of what's to come.
Favorite
I call bullshite. Napster relies heavily on DRM'ed WMA files. Their website doesn't have much on it regarding the real restrictions. Maybe some small indie labels allow them to sell un-DRM'ed MP3's but all the big pop songs like gwen stefani or coldplay are DRM'ed WMA files and NOT unencumbered MP3's which explains why iPod isn't on the list of supported players Apple didn't license WMA support for the iPod in spite of it being capable to support the DRM'ed WMAs. you might workaround the WMA DRM by burning them to a CD and then re-ripping the CD to standard MP3's but they are not selling or renting you unprotected files. Re-encoding/ripping is possibly against the EULA.
jerky
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
You're uninformed. Click the "purchase" button on Napster. Then, click the "purchase" button on iTunes, and tell me what kinds of files you have.
I play my napster files on a device that was not designed to support napster. The DRM is only for the services where you do not purchase individual songs.
And running at a speed of Always-FLOPS.
This stuff is marketed to the people who say:
Our windows-based programs are too slow. Don't tell me we need to go to programs that are written more efficiently, or that there would be an overall cheaper and superior non-windows-based alternative: I don't want to hear it. Change frightens me. Just give me more power.
I see this mentality all the time. Here's an example from school I remember. This one student would sit and take up multiple windows computers in the computer room to run Matlab. He did this for months.
Did he want to hear that he could invest some time and recode in a fully compiled language and come out way ahead in terms of time? No. Did he want to recode to knock off alot of the computing in a very short time using the school's Linux cluster? No. Did he want to take his heaviest subroutines, write them in a compiled language, and call them from Matlab to speed up his calculations dramatically? No. Did he want to know how to rewrite his Matlab code to maximize vectorization and computation efficiency? No.
He just wanted to throw more power behind what he was comfortable with.
People will buy this stuff.
What wireless card? I popped the Ubuntu 5.10 live CD into a brand-spanking-new Dell laptop (700m) and everything worked perfectly with it from the get-go. I was very surprised!
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Just the thing to waste thousands of dollars of hardware, countless days, and hundreds of kilowatt hours of power.
..... the microsoft [microminds] brainless PR Manager demostrated the power of Matlab
... Here We Cum! Grab your towles at the door!
on a Dell Cluster running "Linux"; no doubt that the "Linux" is Red Hat!
HPC Blue Screen of Death
Toodles!
Of course most of the power of the supercomputer will be used to run Anti-Virus, Anti-Adware and to download ads to display in the terminal. I can see it now. "Virus detected- Cleaned" "Adware detected- Cleaned" C:|| Run genome project calc "Preparing to run genome project calc but first a word from geritol" "Loading Geritol ad........do you have MSN?............loading..........Try Windows Vista, it's cool..........loading.........."
Please STOP refering to the 'Blue Screen of Death', it's long gone and out of fashion. Can't you guys find something new to bash MS about?
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
Waah! Lookit meee! Don't forget Microsoft! Lookit mee! Waaah!
Don't look over there.
Waah! Lookit mee! Don't forget me, Emperor Gates! Waah.
Since much of HPC today *is* being done on Linux, is he implying that this new version of Windows will be easier to integrate with Linux that Linux?
he is comparing windows to linux on super computers? ..
so if i want to make a super computer cluster of say 10,000 pcs i immediately have an added cost called the microsoft tax of a minimum of $100. or 10,000,000 usd
am i right?
Disk I/O still slow as molasses. Grad student discovers the software defaulted to non-buffered disk output (flush to disk).
I assume you're running on XServes. That's the default in order to ensure the utmost degree of reliability in the case of a power outage. So you've got these levels all built in (not to mention whatever else you can add, like battery backup and a generator):
Apple recommends leaving this cache off for reliability and data integrity if something goes awry, but if all you want is speed, then enable it. As for your other problems: if the network filesystem is so important to you for a project like this, I recommend researching it for any potential limitations *before* spending a godzillian dollars on a cluster. When worse comes to worse, though, compile your own NFS, etc. for your own purposes; that's allowed. Remember that you're working on the open Darwin platform.
I can't speak to the "ease of use" of your Apple installation, but if your only problems were the ones cited above, it's a matter of doing your research so that you can correctly use the tools you've bought.
We call it an apple tree.
A mac cluster What the fuck!
Now thats a cluster fuck.
DRM
I think you are a cluster fuck.
I am new to linux and I got my sound working.
I was also new to windows and I got my sound card to work with windows.
and in the process I learned something.
be afraid be very afraid.
gunilla
Though i don't agree with stupid shit like hiding the Program Files folder's content by default, i think the doubleclick is an extremely good way to give a buffer zone in case of user error. We're not talking about the inept here, everyone says 'oops' once in a while.
Doesn't anyone else get kinda bored and click on random spots on the desktop, or is that just me?
...could statistically be expected to fail every half an hour, so I read. Given Microsoft's OS reputation, what's the bet an MS powered supercomputer won't be any better? I mean, we *are* 60 years down the track.
Yes, of course, this way you can just run that excel spreadsheet directly on the supercomputer, no need to convert it to a bunch of awkward C code.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
"Gates, as always, has high hopes for this new version of Windows, even claiming it to be as powerful and easier to use than Linux." You mean, Windows is becoming even worse now? I thought he usually claimed, Windows is far superiour to just about everything out there.
To give an idea, 128 nodes will give you at most 512 processors (more becomes EXTREMELY inefficient). 512 processors will net you a place between 300 and 500 on the current top 500 list. This will be very different on the list to be released six months for now... such small clusters might not even show up.
Then there is the user group of HPC systems. It is a VERYsmall market, with a userbase, a group of anministrators and a group of manufacturers traditionally used to UNIX, and now migrating to Linux in droves. Windows is not even duscussed. The announcement of the Windows Compute Cluster edition was cause for great hilarity at the workplace, where jokes like parallel word/excel and high-performance visual basic started floating around. No one will take Microsoft serious in that market.
Perhaps Microsoft will sell some systems to some manufacturers, like in the automotive or pharmaceutical industry. But these guys already know the ways to traditional vendors selling them Linux clusters, vendors like SGI for instance. CHeck the SGI Manufacturing page.
So... will Microsoft compete? So far, they announced an operating system for clusters. Important questions remain:
- Will the OS run headless?
- What low latency networks will be supported?
- Are MPI and OpenMP implementations available?
- what about remote management, remote login and remote copy? (On a side note: why is it that Windows 2003 can't have simple stuff like ssh and scp built in?)
- what applications will be available?
I have to wait and see... i don't expect anything substantial to happen... and if Microsoft does this for prestige, they are wasting their money. -A cluster is more like an embedded system. You set it up once and forget it for a few years (I should know, I've done it a time or two)
My experience is that clusters are in the middle of migrating from being a comp-eng thing (where you expect to work at the "bare metal" level) into a more of a pro-sumer thing where a standard UI is comforting even if it burns cycles.
As for Apple's offerings - I think they illustrate both your attitude and what I describe. My, hrm..., perception is that Apple didn't think there was a point in workgroup clustering either, but more-or-less got dragged into it by their customers.
Clear, Dark Skies
"is the kind of thinking that put IBM where it is today."
What , you mean the biggest computer corporation on the planet?
I don't think you understand HPC as much as you think. Remote batch management? Parallel processing? Again, my experience is that the clusters tend to get used for one or two jobs at a time, which is different from a grid. In that case, the MPI process manager and Microsoft's unspecified "management console" are more than sufficient.
;-D
As for interconnects - I know for a fact that gigE (trivial) and Infiniband will be supported (I believe the IB support comes from SilverStorm) and I've heard Myrinet will be supported, but who wants tired old Myrinet when you can have shiny new InfiniBand?
who, me? work for an IB company? what makes you say that?
Clear, Dark Skies
are now slowing down and 'evaluating' any 'new' technology.
They don't understand it but they do understand that the bread line waits for anyone who impacts the bottom line. That means the TCO is being taken into consideration.
That gives a chance to reject the inappropriate or unwise use of one technology, say using a Beowolf cluster of AMD64Athlon, over another, say using a bunch of slaves on abacuses to calculate the odds for 'intelligent design'.
For some problems, either approach is inadequate.
A heavy club with a nail through it though...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Isn't that like saying; "Better smelling than shit"?
I can compile my code with the INTEL compiles hooked into my Microsoft dev tools with ZERO effort. They all work and play well together.
I'm assuming (I could be wrong) that this will be part of the management console extensions that MS describes in their press release.
Clear, Dark Skies
Bill Gates was going to give a live demo at his key-note speech for the new Windows Compute Cluster, but he didnt gave that and the buzz is that he crashed it while pacticing the demo and also crashed the cluster on which it was supposed to run. What a start !!