I'm working at a university in Germany and we already have a small Windows cluster. However, this is more for research purposes, e.g. to answer questions like "now let's see how this would run on the Windows machine...". The clusters have AMD Opteron or SUN UltraSPARC processors. Check these links out:
At a recent workshop the Microsoft guy explicitly said that they know that they don't have the best product on the market and that they are not really trying to compete with the UNIX/Linux systems. They just want to be present in this computing field as well. In the scientific comunity there are people that would use Windows machines as well, simply because they (we) don't care. All that scientists need is the results of our calculations. Our desktops run various operating systems, according to each person's taste. But in the end we all give the guys at the Computing Centre thousands of lines of serial Fortran or C code that they have to parallelize (OpenMP and MPI) and then run. We can also use a cluster remotely, but in this case it doesn't matter which OS you are running. Depending on a person's field of geekness (e.g. chemistry vs. computers), one can either love a command line interface (because one gets to use his/her brain), or hate it (because it takes the focus off the chemistry). Nevertheless, we all know that when one has some serious programming to do, the UNIX systems really rock because of all the cool tools that are available (especially for optimizing and paralellizing code).
By the way, when the article talks about expence, it meens the expense of the hardware, that has been really expensive until now. The cost of the OS, of course, would add to that though.
technical user perspective
on
Vim 7 Released
·
· Score: 1
I was looking for an editor that can can do syntax highlighting of Fortran sources (I work in the scientific field). I stumbled across Vim. It took me two days to figure it out but in the end you end up with something that fits your needs. Exactly.
However, if its developers try to make a complete word-processor out of it, then I will would rather not upgrade to that version.
Talking about evolution...
In the science field the most popular languages that are used in parallel systems are C and Fortran 77! In most of the situations, you'll find them parallelized with OpenMP and MPI (depending on whether the system has shared memory or not, but most of the times such systems are hybrids).
I've attended a seminar recently on the subject, and the conclusion was that there is way too much legacy code already there for the people that really have the need for speed! (meaning mathematicians, physicists and chemists).
Furthermore, Fortran's latest updates have made it quite attractive for writing new programs as well(!) always in the scientific field of course.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm working at a university in Germany and we already have a small Windows cluster. However, this is more for research purposes, e.g. to answer questions like "now let's see how this would run on the Windows machine...". The clusters have AMD Opteron or SUN UltraSPARC processors. Check these links out:
http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/events/2006 /winhpc/index.php (German)e .php (Egnlish and Gernam)
http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/hpc/index_
At a recent workshop the Microsoft guy explicitly said that they know that they don't have the best product on the market and that they are not really trying to compete with the UNIX/Linux systems. They just want to be present in this computing field as well. In the scientific comunity there are people that would use Windows machines as well, simply because they (we) don't care. All that scientists need is the results of our calculations. Our desktops run various operating systems, according to each person's taste. But in the end we all give the guys at the Computing Centre thousands of lines of serial Fortran or C code that they have to parallelize (OpenMP and MPI) and then run. We can also use a cluster remotely, but in this case it doesn't matter which OS you are running. Depending on a person's field of geekness (e.g. chemistry vs. computers), one can either love a command line interface (because one gets to use his/her brain), or hate it (because it takes the focus off the chemistry). Nevertheless, we all know that when one has some serious programming to do, the UNIX systems really rock because of all the cool tools that are available (especially for optimizing and paralellizing code).
By the way, when the article talks about expence, it meens the expense of the hardware, that has been really expensive until now. The cost of the OS, of course, would add to that though.
However, if its developers try to make a complete word-processor out of it, then I will would rather not upgrade to that version.
Talking about evolution... In the science field the most popular languages that are used in parallel systems are C and Fortran 77! In most of the situations, you'll find them parallelized with OpenMP and MPI (depending on whether the system has shared memory or not, but most of the times such systems are hybrids). I've attended a seminar recently on the subject, and the conclusion was that there is way too much legacy code already there for the people that really have the need for speed! (meaning mathematicians, physicists and chemists). Furthermore, Fortran's latest updates have made it quite attractive for writing new programs as well(!) always in the scientific field of course.