Comments on: Hybrid Computers Will Hide in the Cloud

By: Amazon Gets Graphic with Cloud GPU Instances: Cloud «

Amazon Gets Graphic with Cloud GPU Instances: Cloud « — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:12:43 +0000

[...] Compute Instances handle the brunt of the work. This is an increasingly common practice in heterogeneous HPC systems, especially with specialty processors like IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine [...]

By: The Economics of Servers Could Soon Change: Tech News «

The Economics of Servers Could Soon Change: Tech News « — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:20:56 +0000

[...] and chips isn’t how nicely it plays with a bunch of horizontally integrated pieces but how well it performs from a price, power and efficiency [...]

By: Amazon’s Cloud Gets a Supercomputing Cluster

Amazon’s Cloud Gets a Supercomputing Cluster — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:46:40 +0000

[...] hardware platforms for different workloads in a compute cloud. Perhaps we’ll see other heterogeneous cloud architectures follow suit. GA_googleFillSlot("gigaom_ros_post_footer"); : Amazon, hpc [...]

By: IBM Tries to Sell Enterprises on Workload-Specific Clouds

IBM Tries to Sell Enterprises on Workload-Specific Clouds — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:01:36 +0000

[...] Kloeckner: We make the hardware selections based on the workloads you want to run, and we optimize the workload for you. But because it is in the cloud, in terms of what do you see as a client as to how each different cloud behaves, it’s all entirely consistent. [...]

By: Tom Bradicich

Tom Bradicich — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:47:00 +0000

Stacey, nice post… As we recently discussed, many of the issues plaguing our society today could be both better understood and then managed, by the act of proactively collecting, analyzing, and acting on exisiting and real-time data.

The problems are vast and affect us all – the cost of congestion across the U.S. transportation systems nears $200 billion a year; the healthcare system loses over a billion a year to fraud. At the historic rate of commodity x86 architectures, it won’t provide enough compute power to solve these massive and growing problems. Hence hybrid approach, or a “fit for purpose” approach is needed, which in my view contains some combination or permutation of these components:

- General purpose systems (e.g. x86)
- High speed interconnect acceleration
- Application acceleration
- High performance algorithm acceleration

Cloud computing is just one of the enablers that could make this all possible. Keep up the good work; I look forward to reading more of your posts!

Tom Bradicich, IBM Fellow and VP, Systems Technology, IBM
Twitter.com/DrEckz

By: The Cloud Makes Computers Truly Cheap and Truly Personal

The Cloud Makes Computers Truly Cheap and Truly Personal — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:41:29 +0000

[...] cloud, then the underlying hardware becomes less relevant. This holds true on the client side and in the server world as well, which means we may see the x86 architecture and Intel’s tremendous power begin to [...]

By: Microsoft and Proprietary Chips : Beyond Search

Microsoft and Proprietary Chips : Beyond Search — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:10:42 +0000

[...] for better application performance without expending as many watts, they are experimenting with different kinds of processors that may be better-suited to a particular task, such as using graphics processors for Monte Carlo [...]

By: Is Microsoft Turning Away From Commodity Servers?

Is Microsoft Turning Away From Commodity Servers? — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:59:45 +0000

By: The Hunt for a Universal Compiler Gets $16M

The Hunt for a Universal Compiler Gets $16M — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:01:34 +0000

[...] the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a universal compiler that will run on heterogeneous hardware and multicore platforms, which are found in everything from supercomputers to embedded systems, [...]

By: Hybrid Computers Will Hide in the Cloud | Digital Asset Management

Hybrid Computers Will Hide in the Cloud | Digital Asset Management — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:40:24 +0000

[...] Continues @ http://gigaom.com/2009/03/13/hybrid-computers-will-hide-in-the-cloud/ [...]

By: Who do you go to for custom applications? | TechBurgh Blog and PodCast

Who do you go to for custom applications? | TechBurgh Blog and PodCast — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:17:31 +0000

[...] Hybrid Computers Will Hide in the Cloud (gigaom.com) [...]

By: Ophir Kra-Oz

Ophir Kra-Oz — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:00:19 +0000

I hate to differ, but I don’t think this will ever happen.
Generic hardware beats dedicated hardware almost everyday.
See http://ophir.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/hardware-software-and-virtual-appliances-myths/ for some common myths.
I just saw the new IBM blade server which has Cell CPU in it.
Thy want an extra 20K$ for almost the same chips you get on Xbox for $300.
And you need to rewrite the software.
I doubt that the cloud will help them or that anyone really wants to run SPARC these days. Why would anyone want to do it ?
There might be a future for dedicated algorithm services , but I hardly think they would run on dedicated chips.

By: Ken Oestreich

Ken Oestreich — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:49:20 +0000

I absolutely agree.

Cloud providers (more accurately, Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers) will want to – and need to – differentiate. While Amazon’s EC2 is a “generic” x86 example, some providers will offer specific CPUs. e.g. SPARC, RISC, etc. etc. and be able to charge for it. This is because certain users will demand that their code run on specific platforms but not others. Implicit here is that some clouds will *not* have visualization in them. Again, another form of differentiation.

BTW, I wonder if Sun, in their soon-to-be-announced cloud 3.0, will offer a “Solaris” and or a “SPARC” cloud, as opposed to an undifferentiated one.

It will be interesting if, in an SLA API, users can define specific hardware for specific workloads. Lots of possibilities there….