25 avril 2004

First blog post. Just to give it a try.

My first post is related to the recent post by Cray's CTO about the fact that " Linux clusters don't play in HPC".

I find amusing that Cray, a dying company in the HPC market is making such claims. If you have a look at the www.top500.org web site, you will notice that clusters are now the category that is expanding the fastest in the HPC market.

Some quick facts :
In 1993 : No clusters
In 1997 : 0.1% of clusters
In 2000 : 5.6% of clusters
In 2003 : 41.6% of clusters

If you put together clusters & constellation, you have (in november 2003) around 66% of the 500 most powerful computers.

I think that the figures spoke for themselves : nowadays, the clusters are the dominant paradygm. Cray is an "old guard company" and is desesperatly trying to survive in this "pardygm-shifted" market. Their claim is not suprising however, one can seriously doubt that this is sincere : Old type supercomputers (what was the primary business of cray ) are simply disappearing and Crays's product are clusters when you look at the inside...