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5-27-2008 - HPCC is the Fastest Growing Sector of IT - Comments |
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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
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| May 27 2008, 12:17 PM EDT (current) | laytonjb | |
| May 27 2008, 12:16 PM EDT | laytonjb | 537 words added |
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HPCC is Fastest Growing Sector of IT
Who would have thought?
HPCC is Fastest Growing Sector of IT
Just a quick blog (really a note) that HPC is now recognized as the fastest growing sector of IT. This article from eWeek points out that HPC is was a $11.5 Billion per year business in 2007 and is growing at 19.5%. Earl Joseph from IDC says that x86 servers are the dominant force in data center right now (about 2/3 of all servers). On the HPC side of the house, Linux is clearly the dominant OS with Unix being a very distant second place (Linux is replacing Unix in the HPC sector rather than Unix replacing Unix). He also points out that the rush to commoditization has driven the prices down. For example, Dr. Joseph says,
One thing he points out that I think many people miss is that in many ways HPC is the R&D arm of IT – both on the vendor side and the customer side. HPC is on the cutting edge of technology for IT and provides prototype solutions for future IT systems. For example, HPC encountered power and cooling problems years ago – well before today’s “crisis” in power and cooling in IT systems. HPC was also the first sector of IT to focus on x86 systems. HPC has also been very focused on large storage systems, in particular parallel storage systems with good data protection and reliability, well before the rest of the IT sector has even thought about it. Only now is enterprise-class IT even thinking about storage in the Petabyte range.
Now, let me also say that I’m seeing efforts to move enterprise-class IT capability into HPC. Since HPC is becoming more common IT is looking at it as just another tool. But at the same time, this new technology has to conform to the practices of IT. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult for IT to integrate HPC into the mainstream and HPC could be relegated to the fringe even longer. So what is HPC missing that IT wants, or more importantly, needs? That is really the subject of entire blog (actually a long, long blog). But here are some things I think need to be added to HPC for HPC to better accept them:
These are just a few things I think are needed. There are actually many, many more, but as I said, that’s the subject of another blog (or two or three). However, what IT like feature do you think are missing from cluster tool kits?
Jeff
Who would have thought?
HPCC is Fastest Growing Sector of IT
Just a quick blog (really a note) that HPC is now recognized as the fastest growing sector of IT. This article from eWeek points out that HPC is was a $11.5 Billion per year business in 2007 and is growing at 19.5%. Earl Joseph from IDC says that x86 servers are the dominant force in data center right now (about 2/3 of all servers). On the HPC side of the house, Linux is clearly the dominant OS with Unix being a very distant second place (Linux is replacing Unix in the HPC sector rather than Unix replacing Unix). He also points out that the rush to commoditization has driven the prices down. For example, Dr. Joseph says,
- x86 systems cost about $2,000 per processor (not sure what he means by a processor)
- RISC based processors go for about $7,800 per processor
- Vector based processors go for about $54,000 per processor (ouch!)
- Itanium costs about $9,000 per processor
One thing he points out that I think many people miss is that in many ways HPC is the R&D arm of IT – both on the vendor side and the customer side. HPC is on the cutting edge of technology for IT and provides prototype solutions for future IT systems. For example, HPC encountered power and cooling problems years ago – well before today’s “crisis” in power and cooling in IT systems. HPC was also the first sector of IT to focus on x86 systems. HPC has also been very focused on large storage systems, in particular parallel storage systems with good data protection and reliability, well before the rest of the IT sector has even thought about it. Only now is enterprise-class IT even thinking about storage in the Petabyte range.
Now, let me also say that I’m seeing efforts to move enterprise-class IT capability into HPC. Since HPC is becoming more common IT is looking at it as just another tool. But at the same time, this new technology has to conform to the practices of IT. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult for IT to integrate HPC into the mainstream and HPC could be relegated to the fringe even longer. So what is HPC missing that IT wants, or more importantly, needs? That is really the subject of entire blog (actually a long, long blog). But here are some things I think need to be added to HPC for HPC to better accept them:
- Bare metal backup (disaster recovery)
- More IT like monitoring (HPC has monitoring but it needs to be more IT like)
- Much better alerting tools
- Easier to use tools to setup clusters
- Reporting tools (I find this to be a severe problem in HPC)
- Integration with NIS, LDAP, and ActiveDirectory
- Environment Modules (see last blog)
- Someone to provide support for all pieces of the cluster software stack including an open-source pieces
These are just a few things I think are needed. There are actually many, many more, but as I said, that’s the subject of another blog (or two or three). However, what IT like feature do you think are missing from cluster tool kits?
Jeff
