[Beowulf] Grants for Beowulf Clusters

[Vincent Diepeveen]

Oh well,

My chessprogram diep is looking for a cluster to run at important
tournaments at, also world champs computerchess. lots of publicity and
bragging rights in such a case :)

volunteers can email me: diep at xs4all.nl

warning: i need some testing time, in a competative league you can't afford
running without professional testing. Testing is 99% of the achievement. In
german they say: "ubung macht dem meister".

That is exactly the problems with grants to government. They do not
understand the need for testing at all. Getting testing time is impossible
there. That's why majority of all serious software doesn't run at such
clusters. 

Jonathan Schaeffer told me:
  "You must run at what you can test." 

In general however, you see the biggest nonsense getting written to get
system time. Marketing departments are even worse however. Like: "this new
machine is going to research DNA". This where 0.5% of all system time goes
to such problems. A 2048 processor itanium2 supercomputer with most
expensive quad capable itanium2 cpu's (the dual cpu's are cheaper) is a bit
overkill for that. But well... 

At 07:04 AM 3/14/2005 -0800, Jim Lux wrote:
>I can't claim that I am successful at getting grants for clusters,
>however...
>If you can make a good case that a cluster will make it possible to solve
>some other "important" problem, the odds go up greatly.  Think of a cluster
>as a tool, just like a microscope or an ultra centrifuge or a furnace.  How
>would you justify getting the budget for a big microscope (like a SEM)?
>
>The key is to have a problem that everyone wants to attack, and the cluster
>being the way to attack it.  You said you've been doing proof of concept..
>Is that to prove that you can build a cluster, or that you've demonstrated
>some useful "work" with the cluster on a problem that someone is interested
>in (i.e. for which there is funding available).
>
>Otherwise, you're a solution looking for a problem.
>
>Jim Lux
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Timo Mechler" <mechti01 at luther.edu>
>To: <beowulf at beowulf.org>
>Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 7:19 PM
>Subject: [Beowulf] Grants for Beowulf Clusters
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm wondering what kind of success rate people are having with obtaining
>> grants for Beowulf type Linux Clusters (for example, from the National
>> Science Foundation).  Let me give you a little bit more info as to why I'm
>> asking this:  I'm a junior undergraduate at a small liberal arts college
>> in Iowa (~2600 students), and have solely been pursuing Beowulf clusters
>> for well over a year now.  I believe strongly that even though that my
>> school is small, several departments on campus could benefit from the use
>> of a beowulf cluster in the research that does go on.  I've been using
>> older, slower machines as a proof of concept for now.  Ideally, we would
>> want a faster beowulf system eventually that offers significant
>> improvements over anything desktop pc's have to offer nowadays.  Being
>
>
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