[Beowulf] C vs C++ challenge - hw too

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya robert

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Robert G. Brown wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Cristian Tibirna wrote:
> 
> > (and this is the reason I am ready to cope with performance penalties, 
> > because I can put out code 10-20 times faster than in C -- OK, this is a 
> > subjective measure -- and that code will only run 2-3 times slower -- citing 
> > another poster "that's what clusters are for" ;-).

yupperz... people will do things the fastest/easiest way .. :-)
 
> Well, let's get serious here.  A cluster is a large and costly
> instrument.  You don't really mean that you are willing to waste 1/2-2/3
> of the practical capacity of up to a million dollars worth of hardware
> by writing in C++'s generic objects in order to save a few weeks of
> writing truly efficient code in C.  That makes no sense from a CBA point
> of view -- especially when it requires one to purchase 2-3x as many
> nodes to get the same time of completion of the job OR requires the
> project to run 2-3x as long (3 year instead of one, for example).  You
> can write and debug a hell of a lot of C code in a year.  You can also
> avoid being burned in effigy by competing groups wanting access to the
> resource.

sometimes ... people dont do the "full total analysis" and/or it can
be swayed one way vs another

sometimes cheaper to hire another programmer to do the work ..
while one carries on with one's own area of expertise

-- and dont forget to add the issues of hw costs to the list of too 
	- soemtimes i wonder why people want dual-cpu or quad-cpu

	- found 1 guy ( company ) that says that their custom code runs
	linearly with increasing number of cpu's ...
	( they write custom finite element stuff )

	- otherwise it might be cheapr to run 2 jobs on 2 machines
	than 1.5 jobs on one dual-cpu machines ( aka 2 machines )

have fun
alvin
-- latest fun puzzle ...
	one can fit 4 1Us in one 4U shelf space
	one can also fit 10 1Us in one 4U shelf space
	( magic of atx blades .. 2.5x the capacity in the same volume )

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