Que es mas macho, BlueGene o EGEE? (*)
I just read in Supercomputingonline about EGEE III, the 3rd phase of the gigantic Grid Computing project:
"EGEE-III will last for 24 months, with a total manpower bid of almost 10,000 person months and an EC budget of Euro 36 million. As with EGEE-II, partners will provide extra effort to the project beyond that funded by the EC, bringing the total project budget up to Euro 70 million, and also contributing a further estimated Euro 50 million worth of computing resources."
and I ask myself what is more justified, a single extended 3PFLOPs BlueGene/P with 884,736-processors or thousands of various kinds of old 32 bit boxes distributed all over the world running Scientific Linux 3.0.X and gLite?
For years we were told that no single data center site will be able to cope with a few PB of data per year that will be produced by the LHC; Nice Powerpoint presentations showed a 20km tower of CDROMs, higher than the Mt. Blanc, indicating that only distributed Grid Computing environment will save us from a catastrophe.
Perhaps it is time to ask, in the spirit of Byron Katie's book Loving What Is, her four questions
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*Inspired by the lyrics from Laurie Anderson's song, SmokeRings: "Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?"
"EGEE-III will last for 24 months, with a total manpower bid of almost 10,000 person months and an EC budget of Euro 36 million. As with EGEE-II, partners will provide extra effort to the project beyond that funded by the EC, bringing the total project budget up to Euro 70 million, and also contributing a further estimated Euro 50 million worth of computing resources."
and I ask myself what is more justified, a single extended 3PFLOPs BlueGene/P with 884,736-processors or thousands of various kinds of old 32 bit boxes distributed all over the world running Scientific Linux 3.0.X and gLite?
For years we were told that no single data center site will be able to cope with a few PB of data per year that will be produced by the LHC; Nice Powerpoint presentations showed a 20km tower of CDROMs, higher than the Mt. Blanc, indicating that only distributed Grid Computing environment will save us from a catastrophe.
Perhaps it is time to ask, in the spirit of Byron Katie's book Loving What Is, her four questions
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it's true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
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*Inspired by the lyrics from Laurie Anderson's song, SmokeRings: "Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?"
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