Beowulf usage statistics?

[Velocet]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 01:31:07PM -0500, Roger L. Smith's all...
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Velocet wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps people have designed their clusters for actual use instead of
> > benchmarking to get into the rankings of the top N in the world, realising
> > their clusters wont perform well in that type of ranking.
> 
> Well, even some clusters that aren't so well suited to Linpack
> benchmarking show reasonably well in the top 500.
> 
> > Its just a testostermoronic size competition IMHO.
> 
> Yes, but it's also sometimes a useful marketing tool.  Our university
> administration is quite fond of touting our position on the Top 500 list
> as a tool to help recruit new students, and to prove their dedication to
> our computation research efforts to prospective new rsearch partners.

> We all know that the numbers are nearly meaningless, and I would certainly

If we do, then how does this work to attract students? Or are they
the wrong kinds of students, easily impressed by the wrong things? :)

Really, a more realistic attractor to me would be the quality of minds
and the amount of funding they control at the department, not the
size of the machines and their performance on a simplistic benchmark.

> have built the system differently if that were my only goal, but it is
> certainly a useful piece of propaganda to have under my belt in certain
> situations.

But we must all acknowledge this as a sad but true fact, and not forget
that.

/kc

> 
> 
>  _\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_\|/_
> | Roger L. Smith                        Phone: 662-325-3625               |
> | Systems Administrator                 FAX:   662-325-7692               |
> | roger at ERC.MsState.Edu                 http://WWW.ERC.MsState.Edu/~roger |
> |                       Mississippi State University                      |
> |_______________________Engineering Research Center_______________________|
> 

-- 
Ken Chase, math at velocet.ca  *  Velocet Communications Inc.  *  Toronto, CANADA