[DeTomaso] FW: Cat Aerodynamics

Will Kooiman wkooiman at earthlink.net
Mon May 19 02:37:54 EDT 2008


Sorry - I kinda went off on a tangent.  I wanted to make the point that
desktops are already effectively supercomputers - they're just crippled by
crappy code (i.e. Windows).  That's 99.9% of us anyway, right?

I shouldn't have implied that desktops should be enough to solve all the
world's problems.  I don't believe that, nor should I have implied that.

By the way, I've spent the last 20 years working with large databases -
primarily Oracle - and primarily UNIX.  It isn't as stimulating as fluid
dynamics modeling, but it pays the bills.

Will.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Londry [mailto:davel at emspace.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 12:54 AM
To: Will Kooiman
Cc: 'Detomaso forum'
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] FW: Cat Aerodynamics

Box f.
At the extreme  end, an F1 team runs a dedicated array of 64-bit 
processors under Linux,
 and it has nothing on it but the Computational Fluid Dynamics 
application, like Fluent.

Picking BMW because they weren't one of our customers,
they have a 512 processor array of dual-core Intel Xeons, equivalent to 
more that many desktops.
But, they model a billion cells to deal with all those weird bits of 
crap that hang all over an F1 car these days.
And, they want results now, while the guys in the CAD shop are banging 
out the last bits of weird crap to try.
 
So long as you were willing to wait overnight for the results from a 
run, a much smaller machine would do.
You'd have to be pretty patient to go it on a desktop though.
dave

Will Kooiman wrote:
> Slightly off topic:
>
> The PC's available today are a lot more powerful than the Cray's from the
> 80's.
>
> What makes PC's slow is the software that gets installed on them.
>
> MS Windows isn't the most efficient operating system, but we've had a lot
of
> success using it for a database server platform.  I still prefer UNIX, but
> I'm surprised at how well Windows works - as long as you don't install
"all
> the junk".
>
> Unfortunately, you have to install a lot of "the junk" with Windows.  For
> example, if you don't run a virus scan suite, you're opening yourself up
to
> disaster.  Virus scans are very resource intensive.
>
> Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) came out with the Alpha chipset in the
> 90's.  They had problems exporting servers to Europe because the U.S. had
> rules that prevented exporting supercomputer technology.  That was over 10
> years ago.  The CPU's today are probably 10 times faster than the original
> Alpha CPU's.
>
> My point is that anyone that has purchased a new computer in the last 5
> years or so, essentially already has a supercomputer (probably 100 times
> faster than a mid-1980's Cray).  They just don't know it because they have
> so much junk running on their computer.
>
> If this modeling software is still slow, then probably:
>
> a. The server has too much junk on it.
> b. It's written in Java.
> c. It's running on 32-bit Windows.
> d. It is poorly written.
> e. I don't know what I'm talking about.
>
> Will.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com [mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com]
On
> Behalf Of Steve Hawkins
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:54 PM
> To: Detomaso forum
> Subject: [DeTomaso] FW: Cat Aerodynamics
>
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Londry [mailto:davel at emspace.com] 
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 3:56 PM
> To: Ken Green
> Cc: detomaso at realbig.com
> Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Cat Aerodynamics
>
>
> I used to work for Cray, which doesn't help now, other than knowing which
> customers ran CFD on our machines,
>  but we might have at least an interested person with access to a big
> machine. 
> It doesn't have to be a monster, we can wait a lot longer for a run than
an
> F1 team can.
> dave
>
> Ken Green wrote: 
>
> I asked a friend about this stuff, and he pointed out that you almost need
a
> super computer to run their software.  Not quite for the masses.  
>  
> Ken
>
> Dave Londry DeTomaso mailing list
> DeTomaso at list.realbig.com
> http://list.realbig.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
>
> -- 
> Dave Londry
> Embedded Spaces Inc. (ESI)
> davel at emspace.com
>
> 604 721 2278 cell
> 604 589 9183 phone/fax
> Skype:embeddedspaces
>
>   





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