[geeks] fwd: IBM supercomputer dual-boots Windows and Linux

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 19:27 , Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> The fact is that a power manager or a disk controller is no more  
> visible
> to the end-user (and, in many cases, the programmer) as an  
> independently
> programmable entity than the embedded i8008 in the front-panel of an
> 11/34.

Neither is a system in a cluster.  For the users and most programmers  
they are totally untouchable.

Most programmers see them as entities in a library for MPI or other  
system, which is little different than using some other API to access  
the controller in your SCSI subsystem.

> If nothing else, all this serves to illustrate that the rapid pace of
> change in information technology makes useless any sort of concrete  
> terms
> describing the arrangement of any particular architecture.  Trying  
> to etch
> the term "computer" into stone doesn't make any sense in this age of
> processors all over the place than it did in the age of processors so
> crude that their registers might be in physically separate relay  
> racks.

Exactly.

My main point about the argument that "a cluster cannot be *A*  
computer" is that the distinctions given are really just barriers that  
are about to be knocked down.

We'll soon have single-instance OS, I/O, and filesystems on random  
junkbox clusters and it will look like, act like, run like, and work  
like "a computer".

What are we going to call it?  :)



-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com