Who runs large capability jobs

[Victor Ortega]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Greg Lindahl wrote:
> I made a specific statement about scaling to 1,000 processors. A single SGI
> machine does not scale that big; the biggest is 512, and the O3000 doesn't
> raise that. The numbers speak for themselves. I don't know why we've had
> this long thread about it. I hope someone got something useful out of it,
> but it's been mostly people talking past each other.

That the SGI machine scales to 512 sounds to me very much like a
scalable system.  Scalable, at least to me and perhaps to many others,
means that the system can grow in power and throughput at a reasonable
cost, and I don't think SGI is stretching the term or being misleading
by calling their system scalable.

If you had only said "Note that the SGI won't scale beyond 512", you
would have provided useful information and no one would have argued
with you; instead, you decided to rant on SGI for using the term
scalable.  You say yourself that the numbers speak for themselves; so
why did you delve into the subjective topic of what scalable means?

Please show a little humility in accepting responsibility for starting
this long, acidic thread, and please try to be less offensive on this
list.  I appreciate the expertise you bring to this list, but I
believe I am not alone when I say that the offensive statements and
the hair-splitting aren't welcome.

Victor