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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Jim, <br>
<br>
You're either an evil genius, or someone with too much free time
on your hands today. I suspect it's probably a little bit of both!
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/27/2013 08:23 AM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:<br>
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;
font-family: Calibri; "><span style="font-weight:bold">From:
</span>John Hearns <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:hearnsj@googlemail.com">hearnsj@googlemail.com</a>></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span>Wednesday,
November 27, 2013 4:35 AM<br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span>"<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:beowulf@beowulf.org">beowulf@beowulf.org</a>"
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:beowulf@beowulf.org">beowulf@beowulf.org</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span>Re: [Beowulf]
Docker in HPC<br>
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<div><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 27 November 2013 12:29, Tim
Cutts <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tjrc@sanger.ac.uk" target="_blank">tjrc@sanger.ac.uk</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid;MARGIN:0px
0px 0px 0.8ex;PADDING-LEFT:1ex" class="gmail_quote">
<div style="WORD-WRAP:break-word">Yes, Pete, Guy and I
have been debating this stuff for some time, together
with some of our informatics coders. </div>
</blockquote>
<div> Should virtualisation ever also be necessary (for
example to ship ... to another site to analyse some of
their data)</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Well why not just clone your informatics coders?</div>
<div>I'm sure you have all the necessary technology at the
Sanger Centre - line up your coders, take a DNA sample,</div>
<div>clone them and send off the clones on low cost
airline flights to where they are needed.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I suppose the nine-month lead time might be a bit
problematic from a project planning point of view.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</span>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>--- </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I took a project management class on task planning, and we
worked in fungible work months. (I think the instructor was born
after Brooks wrote his book) Why can you not divide the
reproductive work among 9X workers and get your toilers in a
month? OK, I recognize that this isn't possible today (although
see below for a better idea).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Perhaps a bigger concern is the latency from birth to
"productive coder". Is there a potential application of
computational chemistry here to produce pharmacological agents
that will reduce that 10 year latency (minimum) to something
smaller? Perhaps with selective breeding or genetic
manipulation? Chickens and cows reach marketable size much
faster today than they used to. Software developers (or STEM
graduates in general) are next. Conceivably, one could reduce
the gestation period as well. These physically smaller coders
(make em smarter faster, but don't waste energy on growing large
bodies) will occupy less space in the office, so we can turn
today's space wasteful cube farms with their 8 foot ceilings
into something more reasonable. Perhaps not to the size of the
cages for battery hens, but still smaller than today's cubicle.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Next, imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Coders. Is not the whole
Beowulf idea based on using commodity components in a large
group to achieve what required an expensive single machine to do
before? Think of this.. No relying on specialists or single
great intellects: one can harness the power of the masses. And
you'll get more consistent intellectual performance. None of
that spiky curve of journals per year stuff to worry about. And
you can put your computational units in locations where
environmental conditions favor optimum trades between
productivity and cost. Food and housing is MUCH cheaper in some
places than in others. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In this initial implementation, just as early Beowulfs had to
rely on off the shelf consumer PC on utility shelving, the
cluster of coders would have to use "off the street"
computational units in conventional cubicles. But as described
above, we can use pharmacology and genetic techniques proven in
the farming industry to produce more "purpose designed"
computational units, just as modern clusters have rack mounted
processors mounted in customized rack enclosures. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We then come back to the original problem: manufacturing
latency.. Here is my proposed solution: we apply clustering at
a finer scale, just as we have done with "manycore" processors
incorporating multiple computational units on one chip. Using
commodity wetware, we aggressively parallelize the production
process: Take the DNA, get that embryo growing in vitro,
divide it into a bunch of pieces, distribute the workload among
multiple cores, and then recombine later. There are a few
practical engineering details that remain to be worked out, but
now that I have disclosed the basic idea, I'll make sure my
phone is turned on for the Nobel committee's call next November.</div>
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