[Beowulf] Cloud / HPC

[Hearns, John]

On 04/14/2013 12:46 PM, James Cuff wrote:
>
> Finally a well balanced,hype free article by respected industry expert
> Jeff Layton:
>
> http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/articles/the_cloud_s_role_in_hpc

Just read it.  This is a very good article.

"I consider cloud computing a tool or technique for solving research 
computing problems. Nothing more or less. It's not a panacea, not should 
it be ignored. Issues that must be addressed include data movement and 
security, but it also can save you money and make your traditional HPC 
resources stretch further. "


I agree. Very well put.


I've been making the argument for a while that what is euphemistically 
called "Big Data" is an applied version of high performance computing 
... not in a traditional sense (e.g. MPI, ultra low latency 
interconnects, etc.), but focused upon analyzing huge swaths of data, 
and turning it from "data" with noise into usable actionable 
intelligence


Again, I agree.
Coming from a high energy physics background, thats what experimental HPC folks have been doing for many years.
Huge datasets, with event parallelism and no real need for massively parallel computation.
(indeed remember that the CrayXMP-24 at CERN ended up being used as a hugge disk server!)
HPE is a statistical science - unlike thepress release image of a 'eureka' science, where a Higgs Boson is tracked down and found,
it is a matter of analysing mountaisn of data, and making sure that the statistical 'cuts' you apply are isolating genuine events above the background
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