[Beowulf] re: open64 from AMD (was newbie)

[Chris Samuel]

----- "Mark Hahn" <hahn at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> sorry, but could you decode this 'hiding' thing?  spanking?

Ahh, didn't realise it was a UK'ism! :-)

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-a-hiding-to-nothing.html

> > what we do is provide multiple
> > compilers and recommend to our users that they test
> > their code themselves.
> 
> yeah, that's what we say as well - I'm guessing it doesn't
> work any better for you as for us ;)

We've not had any problems, ours have been very happy
to report results back to us, they feel involved in
how we run the systems (which is nice).

> users are lazy, and rightfully so!  for most of them, 
> HPC is just a tool, and spending part of their lives 
> bumming some cycles doesn't make sense.  it might be
> different if we didn't provide free, all-you-can-eat
> cycles...

I think we must just be lucky then! :-)

> I still think it's a useful question.  even if the answer
> is that different compilers/switches only make 5% difference,
> that's useful to know...

Agreed, and if someone has an answer I'd love to hear
it too..

I'd have thought it would be something that could be
automated fairly easily to create a heap of compiled
binaries and submit them into a queuing system to test
them out.

> > Not a direct answer I'm afraid, but just wanted to
> > share our experiences (we've got a 600+ registered
> > users at present, but they're not all active at once
> > thankfully).
> 
> we're up to 3300 users, >300 active at any time...

I think HPC outside of Australia tends to operate
on a whole different scale, our biggest cluster here
at VPAC has 760 cores..

cheers,
Chris
-- 
Christopher Samuel - (03) 9925 4751 - Systems Manager
 The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
 P.O. Box 201, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia
VPAC is a not-for-profit Registered Research Agency