[Beowulf] SC13 wrapup, please post your own

Adam DeConinck ajdecon at ajdecon.org
Mon Nov 25 16:11:31 PST 2013


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

> 4. I went to a BoF on ROI on HPC investment. All the presentations in 
> the BoF frustrated me. Not because they were poorly done, but because 
> they tried to measure the value of a cluster by number of papers 
> published that used that HPC resource. I think that's a crappy, crappy 
> metric, but haven't been able to come up with a better one myself yet. I 
> was very vocal with my comments and criticisms of the presentations, so 
> if any of the presenters are reading this now, I apologize for 
> hi-jacking your BoF. Getting good ROI on a cluster is close to my heart, 
> but is also difficult to quantify and measure. I hope I can be part of 
> the discussion next year.
> 

Do you have any thoughts you can share on what alternative metrics 
might look like, even if you can't think of one that's clearly better?

I have no horse in this race as I've been doing industry HPC for the
past few years, but I'm curious what good metrics for ROI on an academic
or lab cluster might be. Total number of papers? Number of
citations after an N-year time window? [shrug]

ROI measurement can sometimes be difficult even in an industrial or
commercial setting, especially if the HPC resource is used for R&D or
"engineering support" as opposed to something that feeds directly into
the product.

Cheers,
Adam

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (Darwin)

iQEcBAEBCgAGBQJSk+cxAAoJEGqxms5cZfz0vEcH+gLqL/LmLZgDUcASJGn1U+M0
SbHbwFTbA6DOeMym4gAfvfXrKueabFYA4qHPmAaCoC2XVhCr6vORMLIn27hoA0S7
0dI+hN0H4OUC9u9Xgp9HZtPa2YD1nlYSby6A3D751VDW5m1r4Sn3aafoODyZGkcp
7FyAPhCnK+EgUinICgnfaXVMvCsUJ6cMMi2OicKjLPw85KIkRMfyDbAgh3myE7p2
S6SHKBb3PHzWqIAUZ2iEU+C1XJbwH7bw83ciOJN49T0PPX5+I1Lced76RWcIZC40
YqYdF1kUhBBD7VMonByUBAcCRq7fl9cCLDnEh78z3pZ7+/4dqJcmmMjqyyavrmA=
=xgE9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the Beowulf mailing list