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What Kind of Cloud Computing Project Costs $32M?
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy said today it will spend $32 million on a project that will deploy a large cloud computing test bed with thousands of Intel Nehalem CPU cores and explore commercial offerings from Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ultimately, the project, known as Magellan, will look at cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient way for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics, the DOE stated. Magellan will explore whether cloud computing can help meet the overwhelming demand for scientific computing. Although computation is an increasingly important tool for scientific discovery, and DOE operates some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, not all research applications require such massive computing power. The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."
. . . but also the rest of the sky including the moon and the stars.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
"The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."
This sounds like one of those far-fetched statements that more realistically would be answered as "eleventy-billion."
You know, usually I'm against most government spending programs. They tend to be a huge waste.
But this... It sounds interesting and could actually benefit basic research- something this country sorely needs to support. My (perhaps incorrect) observation is that some groups like the DOE and DARPA tend to allocate funds to valuable research projects rather than pissing money away on terrible administrative database implementations. I guess I should keep in mind that the majority of DOE funding is used to build and maintain our nuclear weapons fleet.
Frankly I`m just suprised that the US government has a whole department dedicated to wasting energy.
:(
...would that be mushroom cloud computing?
Frankly I`m just suprised that the US government has a whole department dedicated to wasting energy.
Sorry to break it to you, but most government departments are dedicated to wasting energy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
With that much money they could get a quarter of an F-22 fighter jet! How dare they spend it on research?
The kind where the company who receives the contract is located in a particular Representative's district.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Just call it the Large Magellanic Cloud
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The right question is who cares when the NSA is spending $2 billion just on the structure for a building (1 million square feet big) to house computers which will do who knows what for signals intelligence. Not to mention another facility in San Antonio being built which will be the size of the Alomodome.
Let's not care about that but nitpick over something ~1% the size and far less destructive to our liberties.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
What's the bright side of cloud computing?
When the cloud goes down, it's a bright and sunny day.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
... sounds like a walk in the park compared to their other spending. I think that number is off by a factor of 100 or so.
In contrast, my small city (~40,000 people) in central Canada is spending ~$56,000,000 on a new Multiplex/Sports center. Supposed to have a new hockey rink, curling rinks, soccer area's with artificial turf.
I'd my city council spend it on a Cloud Computing Centre.
Plus the thousands of other reasonable-sounding government funded projects that cost less than a dollar per taxpayer...
When the last ATC project failed disastrously, people were already playing online games over phone modems. Now we have massively multiplayer games, with gigahertz hardware dedicated to each user (your PC, that is), and ATC is still being done on single mainframes. Quick scan suggests six thousand planes in the air at a time over the US; let's call it ten thousand. Dedicate a CPU to each plus some hierarchy of busy areas and regional control; allow $1000 per CPU/system (and its share of comm bandwidth); call it $10 million. Sounds like an interesting project. :-)
I will gladly give you $0.21 if I (and the many generations after me) get something useful in return. Like the Internet infrastructure we are all using right now.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
and remember, kids: this thread was brought to you by a 40-year-old DARPA project.
In socialist America, children go to school and learn something useful, everyone has healthcare, the entire planet doesn't see the US as a meddling bully that resorts to violence to solve all of its problems, and technology is seen as an opportunity rather than a nuisance. Oh, the horror!
weinersmith
I (and the many generations after me) get something useful in return.
That's the real caveat, isn't it? Things like Social Security were great for a few generations, but before long you'll have to be above the average lifespan to collect because it is going broke. Never mind the fact that that single program alone accounts for about 1/3 of the US deficit. Think about that for a minute - you have to be 65 to collect, and the average life span is in the upper 70's. It's 1/3 of our national debt, yet it will only cover a little more than 1/10th the average citizen's lifetime. It's benefiting the current generation at the expense of the next, and it's exactly the sort of thing people are afraid of with any large government spending project.
The real insidious thing is the hundreds, if not thousands of $32 million projects that fail, and we end up paying for with nothing to show for it. They each individually are too small to take much notice (even $32 has me going "meh" as far as size of project to be worried about), but taken together they represent massive waste.
As far as this particular project, the hardware costs are probably not more than $1 million, it will probably cost $5-10 million to design the system, which is justifiable, and then the other $21 million are all administrative costs. Then the project will over-run when the people running the project change their minds halfway through (and then again change their minds back, or just to something completely different), causing the engineering costs to skyrocket, which in turn causes the administrative costs to skyrocket. I wouldn't be all that surprised if this $32 million project ends up costing $70 million. It happens all the time.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I came a little after reading this.
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It is NOT going broke. That's a myth thats been perpetrated since it's inception.
I remember when I was a teen, it was supposed to ahve been completly over whelmed by 85, then 2000, now it's 2015.
Read up nio the works of the peple that actually study it. It need MINOR adjustment from time to time but it
s not going to collapse.
Well over 99% of all federal project succeed, on time and within budget, and with less waste.
Failed projects do not equal waste.
"the hardware costs are probably not more than $1 million,"
for a project this size? you clearly have no experience building out systems.
We are tlaking about thousands of systems, and good ones not POS bottom of the line Dell's.
You need to pay for the infrastructure. Back bone, racks buildings and other sunk costs.
(Are you lumping this into administrative?)
Now we need people. They are using linux, so probably 1 fte per 200 machines.
Then system design.
Quite frankly, this is a good price for what they nede to do.
Maybe there will be 'cost over runs'. Over runs are often do to provider cost changes. Contract where something is delivered years after the beginning often have a clause to allow more money to cover those costs. I am talking about hard costs, cabling, concrete, etc . . .
The bidest example is rock. The price of rock can be volatile, so it's not uncommon to see bids where they amount paid in the contract is adjusted to cover the providers cost. If you don't do this, bids would be nearly impossible.
"It happens all the time."
no, but the bias is that it does because the 10,000 times it doesn't happen no one says anything.
I was in the private sector for a great many years, in the few years I've been in the public sector o have been constantly amazed at the tight book keeping, the amount of knowledge people have, the accountability, the incredibly high skill set.
Turns out there are very smart, dedicated and qualified people who take a government job becasue they are tired of not having a life.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They have to have somewhere to park the black helicopters
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This is the best summary of project costs I've read. It applies, as the author said, to private as well as public projects.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics