[Fsf-friends] Re: [OT] Desktop supercomputers

Ramanraj K ramanraj.k@gmail.com
Sun Aug 7 21:55:48 IST 2005


On 8/7/05, Rajkumar S <s_raj@flashmail.com> wrote:
> Apologies for digressing from the list charter...

Good that you found your way to the list. Now tell us what new hot
projects are up and running at Sarovar ;)

> Anand Babu wrote:
> 
> > Actual design of supercomputer is very much dependent on the
> > application needs. Best way to benchmark is to use the real world
> > applications and measure performance.
> 
> One question that I always had about super computers are that, do they
> need specialized programs to take advantage of it's processing
> power? For example, I have a program for computing X that is running in
> my existing cluster (say Beowulf), can I run that application in thunder
> and take advantage of it's speed, or do I have to start writing it from
> scratch to run in thunder?
> 
> No where in super computer literature, I have read about writing
> applications for it, except for libraries like PVM. It will be
> interesting to know about how real world applications are written for
> supercomputers.

AFAIK, the Supercomputer that may be a cluster of 1000+ individual
computers appears as a single system to its system administrator/end
user.  Chaos like applications manage your other applications. (
http://www.purehacking.com/chaos/ ) We could be using OpenOffice,
Postgres or  any other application as we would on any other system. 
This much I digressed from AB, and also, once I get my hands on such a
machine, I'll update more details :)

> > Speaking about supercomputers replacing human brain, we really don't
> >  know enough about human brain. We don't even have a good acceptable
> >  definition for Artificial Intelligence. Its a long way to go to for
> >  computers to achieve human like intelligence (30-50 years may be).
> 
> As the quote goes, Artificial intelligence is no match for natural
> stupidity :)

Marvin Minsky pronounced AI to be "brain-dead" some time back, but
that is not the same as being stupid :)



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