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Fastest-Ever Windows HPC Cluster
An anonymous reader links to an eWeek story which says that Microsoft's "fastest-yet homegrown supercomputer, running the U.S. company's new Windows HPC Server 2008, debuted in the top 25 of the world's top 500 fastest supercomputers, as tested and operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. ... Most of the cores were made up of Intel Xeon quad-core chips. Storage for the system was about 6 terabytes," and asks "I wonder how the uptime compares? When machines scale to this size, they tend to quirk out in weird ways."
You've no idea how right you are.
I got to test Server 2008 before it was released to the public. All our internal applications identified 2008 as "Vista".
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
The Windows Server 2K8 code base must be better than previous versions of Windows. From what I understood, Windows didn't scale for clustering due to problems with file locking (IIRC, the overhead for tracking locks grew quickly enough that the performance was marginalized past about 4 nodes). Unless they're using an iSCSI SNS server that handles the locks over a clustered file system. Still, this is leaps and bounds beyond previous versions of Windows WRT clustering!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
While I don't agree that Microsoft Windows HPC Server is the best software to manage a supercomputer, the linux diehards out there should pay attention to a problem that Microsoft is trying to tackle: accessible supercomputing. See one of their case studies as an example.
The bottom line is, these days pretty much anyone has access to a few TFlops of compute power, but the learning curve for getting something running on these machines is pretty intimidating, especially for non-CS based disciplines. I've had to take a 1-2 day class, plus futz around with the clunky command-line tools for a few days or so, on every supercomputer I've used, just to get simple jobs running. In my experience, people learn to game the various batching and queuing systems such that their jobs run faster than everyone else's, further shutting out the newcomers.
HPC vendors would be wise to focus more attention on the tools and interfaces so that Joe-researcher can set the number of nodes and go, rather than having to manually edit loadleveler text files, sending them to the queue, and then coming back next day to find the job failed due to a typo in the startup script.
On multi-TFLOP systems, not everyone needs 99.5% efficiency with all the implementation details that requires. These days, many people just want their job to run reasonably quickly, with no fuss.
The same thing happened several years ago with the move to high level languages like Python and Ruby. Sure, they're slower than C++ and FORTRAN. But for the vast majority of applications, you wouldn't know the difference on modern processors. And the turn around time and user-friendliness on these languages is so much better, using them is a no-brainer.
Hopefully Microsoft can spur the industry in this direction.
From your case study:
"""
In addition, it is investigating ways to allow users to connect remotely to the cluster. It expects to complete the project and move the cluster into production by March 2009.
"""
By time the cluster in the case study allows users to remotely log in, the hardware will have lost at least 1/2 of its value.
While more work is needed to make things user friendly, you have to remember that the funding is there for CPUs; not many folks are forward looking enough to realize researchers really need funding into making stuff easier.
Whereas Server 2008 and Vista share a tad more of their code base.
and *that* is relevant.
And could be humorously be alluded to because of the mis-detection of some software.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"Microsoft is trying to tackle: accessible supercomputing"
..
.. are accessible to people interested in pursuing science, simulation or modeling"
.. :)
Assuming MS was responding to this imagioned problem
"The contest showed that supercomputers
"but the learning curve for getting something running on these machines is pretty intimidating, especially for non-CS based disciplines. I've had to take a 1-2 day class, plus futz around"
You actually programed a supercomouter - cool. What type and where exactly? How does HPC Server differ in respect to other solutions?
"the Blue Gene family of supercomputers has been designed to deliver ultrascale performance within a standard programming environment"
"Hopefully Microsoft can spur the industry in this direction"
You mean like continually inventing Apple, badly
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