[Beowulf] [External] Re: old sm/sgi bios
Prentice Bisbal
pbisbal at pppl.gov
Thu Mar 23 22:12:59 UTC 2023
Mentioning it to him was pointless. You know the serenity prayer? Well,
I had the serenity to accept that his backwards attitude was something I
could not change, so it was just a source of entertainment for me.
I did share my experience with my boss, who was the best boss ever, and
she was like "Yeah, I figured". That director of CADD talked a lot of
game, but he couldn't walk the talk and was eventually let go, but not
until he drove me out of the company, and cost them a lot of money in
useless, outdated computer hardware.
I do have to say it did inspire me to name my Linux workstation
"underdog", which was one of my favorite hostnames I've come up with
("bobblehead" being my all time favorite - honestly is there any better
task for a system admin than coming up with good hostnames?)
--
Prentice
On 3/23/23 4:48 PM, Darren Wise via Beowulf wrote:
>
> I nearly dropped my coffee lol, did you make note & record his face if
> you ever did in past tense mention such by chance the comparisons?
> -I'm just curious with wonder..
>
> On 23/03/2023 19:08, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, that whole situation was frustrating. From 2004 -2007, I was
>> working for a pharmaceutical startup supporting their Computer-Aided
>> Drug Discovery (CADD) team. Had I been hired before the director of
>> CADD, it would have been a 100% Linux shop. Instead, as soon as he
>> was hired he started insisting, and circulated a memo, stating that
>> Linux was still a toy for hobbyists and "not ready for primetime" (he
>> used that exact quote). So we spent tens of thousands of dollars on
>> two Octanes and the 8-way Origin 350. I got a Linux workstation as a
>> proof-of-concept, and that HP Workstation running Linux that cost
>> only a few thousand dollars ran circles around those SGI boxes, and
>> when cost was factored in FLOPS/$ was like 10x better than the SGI
>> hardware at that point. And all of that hardware was bought used
>> ("remarketed") from SGI, so new hardware would have compared
>> significantly worse in terms of value.
>>
>> Also, it turned out the director of CADD owned a nontrivial amount of
>> SGI stocks, so not only was an he over-the-hill curmudgeon afraid of
>> new technology, there was also a pretty clear conflict of interest
>> for him to be pushing SGI, even though I'm sure our small purchase
>> did nothing to improve SGI stock value.
>>
>> On 3/23/23 2:58 PM, Joe Landman wrote:
>>>
>>> They had laid off all the good people doing workstations by then, I
>>> think they outsourced design/production to ODMs by that time. MIP
>>> processors were long in the tooth in 1999, never mind 2007.
>>>
>>> Having been at SGI from 1995-2001, I can tell you the reason MIPS
>>> sucked wind at that point, was the good ship Itanic sunk Alien and
>>> Beast processors. Those design teams left, and we didn't have much
>>> for post R10k, other than respins and shrinks of R10k. Which were
>>> renamed R12k, R14k ...
>>>
>>> Beast would have been relevant (near EOL though) in 2007.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/23/23 14:53, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Between 2003 and 2007, I worked with a lot of O2s, Octanes, an
>>>> 8-way Origin 350, and even a Tezro. I don't miss those days.
>>>>
>>>> I always felt like the design of their workstations was done by the
>>>> same people who design Playskool toys rather than professional
>>>> hardware.
>>>>
>>>> Prentice Bisbal
>>>> Senior HPC Engineer
>>>> Computational Sciences Department
>>>> Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
>>>> Princeton, NJ
>>>> https://cs.pppl.gov
>>>> https://www.pppl.gov
>>>> On 3/23/23 1:08 PM, Ryan Novosielski via Beowulf wrote:
>>>>> Seriously. I have an Indy and an Octane2 laying around. That’s not
>>>>> even an SGI. :-P
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> #BlackLivesMatter
>>>>> ____
>>>>> || \\UTGERS,
>>>>> |---------------------------*O*---------------------------
>>>>> ||_// the State | Ryan Novosielski - novosirj at rutgers.edu
>>>>> || \\ University | Sr. Technologist - 973/972.0922 (2x0922) ~*~
>>>>> RBHS Campus
>>>>> || \\ of NJ | Office of Advanced Research Computing - MSB
>>>>> A555B, Newark
>>>>> `'
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mar 23, 2023, at 13:07, Michael DiDomenico
>>>>>> <mdidomenico4 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ack, irix flashbacks... :) fortunately, this machine isn't quite that
>>>>>> old, circa 2013
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 1:02 PM Darren Wise via Beowulf
>>>>>> <beowulf at beowulf.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I don't personally have such myself but anything SGI even with
>>>>>>> today's
>>>>>>> exotics Ians about the most knowledgable I know of globally and
>>>>>>> seriously dying out within this sector, I hazard a guess your SM
>>>>>>> board
>>>>>>> would be considered quite new compared to other systems.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>>>>> Darren Wise
>>>>>>> Research Engineer, Mechatronics
>>>>>>> https://wisecorp.co.uk, .us & .ru
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 23/03/2023 16:51, Michael DiDomenico wrote:
>>>>>>>> does anyone happen to have an old sgi / supermicro bios for an
>>>>>>>> X9DRG-QF+ motherboard squirreled away somewhere? sgi is long gone,
>>>>>>>> hpe might have something still but who knows where. i reached
>>>>>>>> out to
>>>>>>>> supermicro, but i suspect they'll say no.
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>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>> --
>>> Joe Landman
>>> e:joe.landman at gmail.com
>>> t: @hpcjoe
>>> w:https://scalability.org
>>> g:https://github.com/joelandman
>>> l:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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>
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