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Dryad - Distributed computing infrastructure from Microsoft Research

research.microsoft.com

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Re: Dryad - Distributed computing infrastructure from Microsoft Research

#11

Post by rbanffy »

rbranson wrote: post #5
sgk284 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft (but this is all my opinion). Dryad has been discussed publicly since around 2006 (iirc). Hadoop's earliest public release I can find is from 2007 (but I'm sure it was around before that). I just want to put this into perspective. Microsoft isn't suddenly implementing MapReduce 6 years after Google released the paper. They realized as soon as the paper was released that it was a good i…

Thanks for your input, but I don't buy this argument. Public discussion and actual working software releases are two completely different things. In addition, considering cash on hand, I expect Microsoft to innovate and bring new ideas to market, not simply re-invent the status quo within their own platforms.

"I expect Microsoft to innovate and bring new ideas to market"

And risk their dominant position by creating a new market they can't control as well as the last one?

Don't hold your breath.

Re: Dryad - Distributed computing infrastructure from Microsoft Research

#12

Post by sgk284 »

rbranson wrote: post #8
sgk284 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, should have qualified 'discussing'. By the time Microsoft started talking about it, they had a functioning system. The turn around was pretty damn quick. As far as innovation goes, read up on Dryad. They do a few pretty interesting things. It goes above and beyond what MapReduce does. The computation is expressed as a giant dynamic directed graph (the graph can change during computation). Each node is a progra…

I still assert that there's a difference between internal prototyping and public release. Microsoft is JUST NOW releasing Dryad. It doesn't matter if they were talking about it for 50 years, what matters is the implementation and availability. I understand that it's more than just Hadoop.NET. Perhaps I broad brushed, but fundamentally, these are tweaks from what exists. I am not saying that it is purposeless, but I a…

Ah, see there's the confusion. Dryad has been used internally since day one, I didn't even know you could get it outside of Microsoft. I don't think it was initially intended to be a commercial project, but more of a "We do billions of processing tasks a day, here's a way for us to do it faster and cheaper."

Anyway, yea I agree... it's definitely not as earth-shattering as MapReduce was. It has some neat integration with other Microsoft technologies but I never really thought of it as a commercial product.

I don't know why people are down voting you. You had valid points and concerns. I voted you back up to help out a bit (you shouldn't lose karma over a perfectly legitimate discussion on the pros and cons of a technology)

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