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All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

zdnet.com

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Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#181

Post by vram22 »

GlennS wrote: post #31
vram22 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) Yes, since Swedish is a Germanic language, I suppose. I know a bit of German too, and have noticed that when I read words in Scandinavian languages, I can sometimes guess what they mean, due to their being similar to corresponding German words. Had been reading on Wikipedia about different human languages and their backgrounds and histories a while ago, and was interested to see that Finnish and Hungarian had stuf…

You also appear to know English, another Germanic language.

Ha, good one. In fact I had mentioned in a thread about Berlin startups on HN a while ago, that knowing English helped me a bit with guessing the meaning of some German words, since the two cultures have some common historical and cultural background.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#182

Post by BeefySwain »

wmf wrote: post #10

Note that BlueGene/Q is commonly reported to run "Linux" but 99% of the nodes are running CNK instead. https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/bgq/#Software

With such a glaring misconception, it makes you question the rest of the information presented.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#183

Post by rootbear »

vram22 wrote: post #24
rootbear wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I visited Finland for this year's Worldcon (SF convention) I learned that all Finns learn Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of Finland. Knowing some German, I found the Swedish street signs more helpful than the Finnish ones!

:) Yes, since Swedish is a Germanic language, I suppose. I know a bit of German too, and have noticed that when I read words in Scandinavian languages, I can sometimes guess what they mean, due to their being similar to corresponding German words. Had been reading on Wikipedia about different human languages and their backgrounds and histories a while ago, and was interested to see that Finnish and Hungarian had stuf…

My Hungarian friend finds the link to Finnish hard to hear or see, but some Finns I spoke to said that when they visit Hungary, they hear it, more in the rhythms than in actual words.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#184

Post by gorbachev »

rrmm wrote: post #126
PeachPlum wrote: post #17

Ronald Minnich (if you don't know him see [1]) comments : [1] https://share-ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/san... ----------------- "The semiannual TOP500 Supercomputer List was released yesterday. It also shows that China now claims 202 systems within the TOP500, while the United States claims 143 systems." My fellow Americans: Did you ever want to directly experience the transition to being a Tier 2 cou…

While I don't completely disagree with the premise, I'm not sure that having the most supercomputers in the TOP500 is evidence of it. The PRC is striving to become a global competitor in as many fields as it can, as quickly as possible. But sometimes they go after the status symbols of achievement versus actual productive achievements. Both the ghost cities that stood initially empty and the supercomputer clusters th…

Personally I think China is doing a much better job at securing the future prosperity of the country than the US is. The Chinese Government is systematically executing on a long term plan to do that. One example is the way China has cornered the rare earth elements market.

We seem to be flailing in 4 (or 8) year cycles with most of the progress made in previous cycle being wasted or destroyed within the next cycle.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#185

Post by rootbear »

ekianjo wrote: post #59
GlennS wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also appear to know English, another Germanic language.

English has been widely influenced by French after William the Conquerer and the Normands rule over England for almost 4 centuries. Take a look at Beowulf and good luck trying to understand the original germanic version of English. You won't.

There is a whole branch of the conlang (constructed language) community that is interested in what English would be like if it hadn't been manhandled by Norman French. Science Fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote an essay in which he tried to use as few non-Anglo-Saxon words as possible, using calques from German where necessary. The result is sometimes said to be in "Anders-Saxon". The essay[1] is fun to read and has a Wikipedia page [2]. A friend said it was like reading one of the Norse sagas.

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

Sorry if this is way too much topic drift from Supercomputers!

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#186

Post by rootbear »

astrodust wrote: post #43
wmf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC at one point Microsoft paid one of them to run Windows and years ago there was one running OS X. Decades ago during the Unix Wars there used to be proprietary HPC OSes.

When Cray and SGI were still in the game there was a lot more operating system diversity. Apple's Xserve cluster was an interesting experiment but it never really went anywhere.

Both Cray and SGI (now HPE) are both still very much in the game. Their systems all run Linux.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#187

Post by rootbear »

martinpw wrote: post #105
linarism wrote: post #2

Serious question (not in IT), what else can they run?

If you go here: https://www.top500.org/statistics/overtime/ Then select "Operating System" and submit, you can see the OSs that used to be run on systems over the past 10 years.

Nice chart! The speed with which Linux supplanted proprietary Unix systems is remarkable.

It would be interesting to know what version of Linux is used most often on current supercomputers. The supercomputer here at Goddard runs SLES (Suse) and I believe other NASA supercomputers run that as well.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#188

Post by njarboe »

nhaehnle wrote: post #155
JoshTriplett wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth First: yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources : because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve. Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who belie…

> Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who believe it should be taken away from them to justify that. This is a great example of status quo bias. You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from fir…

Democracy should be a tool not a religion. I'm pretty glad Elon Musk had $100 million to save Space X and Tesla during the financial crash.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#189

Post by unethical_ban »

nhaehnle wrote: post #155
JoshTriplett wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth First: yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources : because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve. Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who belie…

> Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who believe it should be taken away from them to justify that. This is a great example of status quo bias. You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from fir…

Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity?

Some people are worse than others. Some people are less useful to society than others, though that doesn't make them worse. Some people, given large amounts of money, can do amazing things for the world. On a whim, I can think of Elon Musk. If he weren't allowed to have his fortune from Paypal because inequality is unethical... who would have gotten that money? A government? What would they have done with that money? And why is government/the public always the best decider of how wealth is spent?

Your argument may be reasonable in degrees: Who needs $500 billion dollars? Should there be a legal requirement to invest that money in the public at a certain point, if it isn't taxed directly? I don't know. But I believe inequality is ethical and necessary.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#190

Post by njarboe »

derefr wrote: post #34
whataretensors wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame the SEC for this one. Their accredited investor regulation gave the future to the rich. Seed round, series A, B, C, etc should be a vehicle for class mobility. Instead it's a way for the rich and powerful to accumulate more wealth. With YC and other incubators acting as a filter for where investors should put money, it matters more which zipcode you were born into than your overall intelligence and creativity.…

Investor accreditation makes sense (for now.) Giving poor people free access to untested-investment-vehicle-X is basically the same as giving them over-the-counter access to scheduled drugs. Mistakes will be made, and the people making them—lacking resources as they do—won't be able to recover from them. Right now, we're spending a lot of money trying to figure out how to get people out of these ruts. (Free housing s…

In the US we let people gamble; the government even runs and promotes it in many states. We let people get credit cards to buy consumable products and then pay 20%-30% interest. We let them take out loans to buy real estate worth multiples of their annual salary and have a debt overhang greater than they could ever save in a lifetime. We let teen-agers take out $100k of student loans that can't even be dismissed by bankruptcy. We are not "protecting" people in all these other problematic financial situations.

I might advocate for shutting down gambling, credit cards and getting the government out of student and home loans, but if we think those actions should be are allowed, investing in small companies should be also.

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