<div><br></div><div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Hey team Beowulf,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">So most of you know that I headed out from being the research computing guy at Harvard to join Cycle Computing last month. It's been a fun first few weeks, what with 10,000+ server instances pinging up in hours flat and doing some stunning science to boot! </div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
Anyway, I noticed the "Utility Supercomputing" concept had been written up recently over at HPCwire: </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><a href="http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-02-28/utility_supercomputing_heats_up.html" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)">http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-02-28/utility_supercomputing_heats_up.html</a> </div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif">I, as most of you, always give a big hairy technical eyeball to any statements that include MPI and "cloud". I know I'm biased, but I do think Jason does a great job of explaining "the bench", i.e. never assume raw horsepower until you test it! Always reminds me of those 1,000bhp motors that are only great in straight lines ;-) Another thing to think of is total cost per unit of science. Given we can now exploit much larger systems than some of us have internally, are we are starting to see overhead issues of vanish due to massive scale, certainly at cost? I know for a fact that what we call "Pleasantly Parallel" workloads all of this holds true, certainly results in lower cost per unit science at massive scale for those grand challenge "PP" problems. </font></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
I personally think the game is starting to change a little bit yet again here... </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
<span style="font-size:small">So at the risk of being moderately</span><span style="font-size:small"> contentious: straw poll - what do we think as a team about these issues?</span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
<span style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">j.</span></div><br clear="all"><div><p style="margin:0px"><span style="color:rgb(127,127,127);font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt">Dr. James Cuff</span></p>
<p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(127,127,127)"><font size="1">Chief Technology Officer</font></span></p><p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(127,127,127)"><font size="1"><br>
</font></span></p><p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(127,127,127)">Cycle Computing</span></p><p style="margin:0px"><i><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(127,127,127)">Leader in Utility Supercomputing and Cloud HPC Software</span></i></p>
<p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(127,127,127)"> </span></p><p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(84,141,212)"><font size="1">cell: 617.429.5138</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(84,141,212)"><font size="1">main: 888.292.5320</font></span></p><p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(84,141,212)"><font size="1">skype: cycle.james.cuff</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(84,141,212)"><font size="1">web: <a href="http://www.cyclecomputing.com" target="_blank">http://www.cyclecomputing.com</a></font><br></span><a href="http://www.cyclecomputing.com" target="_blank"><img></a></p>
<p style="margin:0px"><a href="http://www.cyclecomputing.com" target="_blank"><img></a></p></div>