1) For computational fluid dynamics, I have access to accounts on what are a significant fraction of the NSF teragrid supercomputers.
i.e. Ranger Lonestar Champion Kraken Blue Gene/L Datastar, etc.
These machines have various IBM, Intel, and AMD core architectures. They all run linux. Not unix, not windows.
If we consider the National Science Foundations supercomputers representative of high end simulations in academia, one could then argue that all serious computational research is being conducted on these linux machines. [For the record, I spend very little time hacking apps on any of the aforementioned machines.]
Your statement, [scientists used...] "Linux if you want to spend your time hacking your OS and apps and never finishing your research." is therefore erroneous, barring proof that the NSF conducts no actual research.
2) In addition, my association of financial engineering and excel was to point towards the field possessing less rigor than would be provided in 'harder' fields of engineering and physics.
As a concrete example, Excel is terribly ill-suited to handling large data sets. Given the volume of data that exists pertaining to financial instruments, that immediately leads me to suspect that many of the models in financial analysis that relied on using excel was making significant, and quite possibly erroneous, assumptions.
I am not talking about a basic discounted cash flow analysis. I have heard banks were relying on Excel for options pricing, derivatives, etc.
As a graduate student in physics, I have never seen a serious researcher use excel for data analysis.
Nor for that matter, is it common to see a scientist using windows for the OS--all linux and mac OS.
This is akin to writing a book about publishing scientific papers with office. Instead, learn LaTex...
The only group of people who use excel for large data analysis are financial types and MBAs. Need I remind you how that turned out?
I was at TACC a few weeks ago, and the peak performance was around 519 teraflops....
Sadly, they also said the word on the street is that IBM wont take too kindly to the new king in town, and since TOP500 is biannually, everyone is biting their nails about blue-gene getting a quick upgrade in time to stay on top.
Turns out the blue-gene systems are so scalable its quite easy to strap a few thousand new processors for a nice performance boost.
Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Penguins? Skip the desktop -- 2009 will be the year of the Linux Apocalypse.
I, for one, welcome our new idiotic robot overlords.
The Large Hadron Collider, but no one believes me!
1) For computational fluid dynamics, I have access to accounts on what are a significant fraction of the NSF teragrid supercomputers.
i.e.
Ranger
Lonestar
Champion
Kraken
Blue Gene/L
Datastar, etc.
These machines have various IBM, Intel, and AMD core architectures. They all run linux. Not unix, not windows.
If we consider the National Science Foundations supercomputers representative of high end simulations in academia, one could then argue that all serious computational research is being conducted on these linux machines.
[For the record, I spend very little time hacking apps on any of the aforementioned machines.]
Your statement, [scientists used...] "Linux if you want to spend your time hacking your OS and apps and never finishing your research." is therefore erroneous, barring proof that the NSF conducts no actual research.
2) In addition, my association of financial engineering and excel was to point towards the field possessing less rigor than would be provided in 'harder' fields of engineering and physics.
As a concrete example, Excel is terribly ill-suited to handling large data sets. Given the volume of data that exists pertaining to financial instruments, that immediately leads me to suspect that many of the models in financial analysis that relied on using excel was making significant, and quite possibly erroneous, assumptions.
I am not talking about a basic discounted cash flow analysis. I have heard banks were relying on Excel for options pricing, derivatives, etc.
As a graduate student in physics, I have never seen a serious researcher use excel for data analysis. Nor for that matter, is it common to see a scientist using windows for the OS--all linux and mac OS. This is akin to writing a book about publishing scientific papers with office. Instead, learn LaTex... The only group of people who use excel for large data analysis are financial types and MBAs. Need I remind you how that turned out?
I was at TACC a few weeks ago, and the peak performance was around 519 teraflops.... Sadly, they also said the word on the street is that IBM wont take too kindly to the new king in town, and since TOP500 is biannually, everyone is biting their nails about blue-gene getting a quick upgrade in time to stay on top. Turns out the blue-gene systems are so scalable its quite easy to strap a few thousand new processors for a nice performance boost.