[Beowulf] Re: "hobbyists"

[Lawrence Stewart]

On Jun 20, 2008, at 2:20 PM, Prentice Bisbal wrote:

> Lawrence Stewart wrote:
>
>> And don't get me started about the ways in which Linux is ill  
>> suited to
>> HPC. . . . well actually that
>> would be a pretty good debate for this forum.
>
>> -Larry
>>
>
> But, Larry, SiCortex products are based on Linux. It say so in nice  
> big
> letters right there on your company's main page:
>
> "Linux-based super-computing, designed from the silicon up."
>
> - http://www.sicortex.com/
>
> --
> Prentice
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Linux is the worst operating system anywhere...except for all the  
others.   Kind of like democracy.

Now who was it at SiCortex who chose Linux?  Oh yes, it was me.

Linux is more reliable than anything else, more amenable to porting,
more adaptable, there is more available stuff that works with it,  
customers
like it, it pretty much works good.  And it is open source.

But it isn't elegant, except in patches.

More specifically for HPC, linux seems designed for the desktop, and  
for small
memory machines.  Many of the decisions that made good sense in the '90s
make no sense now.  512 byte disk sectors?  4096 byte pages?  Randomly
allocated physical memory?  "large page" patches on small pages?
All sorts of dinky little tasks waking up and generating OS noise to  
clobber
your collectives?

-L