Posts by HPCJohn 169 posts • joined 18 Sep 2014
I shall look at that channel.
In my student days I bought a surplus BT baudot teleprinter for a fiver (or maybe a tenner). TI took two people to lift the thing. IT still had the hotel code for where it was originally stationed wired on, so would print this.
I connected it up as a printer to my TRS-80. Wish I still had it but it was huge and was binned at some point.
Never printed smut on it!
Back in the days of CRT monitors in offices I Was once warned against Christmas tinsel bedecking monitors.
Something about static charge being gathered by metallic tinsel.
I was also given the line that CRT monitors give you spots. The screen does get charged, which produces an image charge on your face which attracts dirt.
SO spotty IT nerds may not be that much of a cliche.
It is in the Nordics. They probably have existing hydro electric capacity next door.
For the UK, I have often said that why is there not a green data centre in Kinlochleven?
There was a hydeoelectric plant there for an aluminium smelter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinlochleven
I guess the hydro plant may no longer be active, and not worth reviving.
Williams F1 developed a flywheel for KERS energy storage. This is tightly wound carbon fibre filaments. It is lightweight and spins extremely fast.
There is a danger when flywheels fail, I gather the carbon fibre one is safer than most as it explodes into carbon fibre particles (which probably should not be breated in).
That flywheel was said to be being commericalised - I wonder of the Navy are using that technology?
https://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/f1/williams-f1-kers-explained/
I love the USB-C standard, and have it on my laptop.
Thoughts on why USB-C is not on Rasp PI? I guess that having a separate HDMI output is no big consumer os space, and it allows hobbyists and schoolchildren to hook up a cheal HDMI Cable to a standard television. With a USB-C port you would need a separate hub to fan out to HDMI, stanrard USB for keyboard and mouse, and for ethernet. Which would cost more than the Rasp PI
Also I guess USB-C chipsets aren't integrated with the SoCs used on Rasp Pi.
Thoughts?
Wow. That brings back memories.
As a graduate student in high energy physics, I got my very own 3270 terminal, connected to the mainframe downstairs by twinax cables.
Best keyboard I have ever had.
Many joyful days running virtual machines under CMS. I remember the REIPL CMS command to reboot (Initial Program Load). It probably would all come back if I got a 3270 in front of me!
In later days I got a FALCO terminal at CERN. VT220 emulation, plus a hotkey to Tektronix graphics emulation. I used a 3270 emulator on DEC VMS to access the mainframes there.
You cram them in a rack because they will likely to be accessed remotely.
OK, these ones are said to be quiet. But powerful workstations, as the article says, are noisy and produce heat.
So you use Teradici PCOIP terminals or Citrix to access them
https://www.amulethotkey.com/
These guys are good at this, and I have worked with them.
Advantages are:
Low power, silent terminal on your desktop, can be on the back of your monitor.
Secure encryption for spooky sites.
Workstations are secure in the data centre, your data never leaves there.
Workstations are on a fast network near the data.
If a workstation fails, you just connect another one in the rack up to the desktop, No crawlin about under desks ad the engineer gets up and running faster.
Fantastic blog from an experienced chemist:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=Things+I+Wont+Work+With
What if the AI is stupid enough to try brewing up FOOF for instance?
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride
In the blog Derek describes compounds so reactive that if they go on fire and you throw the sand bucket on them.. the sand catches fire...
I'm no chemist, but I have seen notices in chemistry departments about compunds which smell so bad you have to notify people. What if the AI fancied a little batch of one of them?
David, I believe the target for a realistic Exascale machine is 30MW - not as in target to get above 30, but to get below.
Yes indeed, having worked for several HPC integrators the running costs are just as important as the hardware. So any innovative schemes to improve the PUE, or indeed to reduce the power per transistor switch cycle, are of interest.
None of these designs are low power because at the end of the day a transistor is a transistor.
Well said. There is work going into the power consumption per instructions 'picowatts per flop'.
I saw one commen tthat the advent of GPU computing taught a generation that double precision floating point is not needed for everything. I think there will be more effort put into choosing the appropriate precision for calculations, saving power by making the actual algorithms more power aware.
In the Oxford Supercomputer centre they have a similar system. An inert gas is used to keep the oxygen content in the server room below the point at which ignition will occur, but you can still breathe.
Very sensible safety precautions there are never to work alone.
I do recall feeling a bit woozy after being in the server room for a few hours though.
Thanks AC. I have installed and configured my fair share of 48 port switches, most recently Mellanox 10Gbps switches.
The cabinet looks like a standard wall mount comms cabinet to me, and as it is mounted high up I have never really been curious enough to go poking in it. 200 CAt5 cables is quite bulky. I guess I only need to count the cables coming out of the box.
There is a standard sized wall-mounted cabinet in the basement. I have never had a close look at what is in there.
The babinet is about 10U high, so you are right it probably does not have a whopping big enterprise router in there.
Actually the cabinet is in the underground car park and cables go off up the cable risers to each floor. I would say you are correct, and there must be some small switch in each riser, so each set of apartments is connected to a leaf switch.
The apartment building wher eI live has Hyperoptic as the provider. Blooming marvellous, compared to the awful ADSL service which went before, and would stop working on hot days. Far too many connections multiplexed onto Docklands infrastrucure which went all the way back to the Bermondsey exchange. I saw the excuse was that in the Docks era all the warehouses had alarm lines via telephone. These could not have junction boxes in the streets, as the crims would bypass the alarm.
Anyway - Hyperoptic runs a fat fibre connection to the basement of the building. Every flat gets a Ct5 cable back to the router in the basement. Works great and I was able to stream the 4K test signal from the BBC.
Sorry, but I paid nigh on 2000 quid for a high end laptop, which I love. HP Spectre.
I can boot it into Linux and do all the development work I want.
I paid Micorosft for windows 10 Home, which I actually quite like. But I want to run some Docker containers? Oooh noo mate... shell out some more cash.
IF anyone from Microsoft reads this, you are not encouraging anyone to dabble in Docker with Windows. Not relvant to Dev Spaces of course.
You will find that on downloading Docker for Windows it wil lnto run with Windows 10 Home edition. It needs the Professional Edition.
That is not a great way to encourage anyone to try Docker out.
I think this really flags up that passwords are an outdated concept. Mock as much as you like abotu writing passwords down, but why in the 21st Century are we relying on a series of characters pressed out on what is quaintly known as a 'keyboard'.
I don't have the solution myself, however I rather do like Microsoft Hello and facial recognition.
I realise there will be many responses saying 'this is not secure enough'
For centuries, people have placed great store in physical keys. You can still see keys for ancient castle doors for instance, so we have a cultural appreciation of keys.
I really dont see why more companies dont use smartcards for authentication. You normally have a smartcard on a lanyard, and this is used to open doors within the building.
OK, for the home user and e-commerce sites you wont have a company smartcard. But increasingly we see two factor authentication using a one-time code sent to a mobile phone.
ArrZarr, do some Googling on Chernobyl. It is the opposite with the water. The RBMK reactor has a positive void coefficient. When the water boiled and steam bubbles appeared this caused an INCREASE in power output from the reactor. I also dont believe that the operators added any more water - indeed how can you add more water in what is highly likely to be a closed loop system.
Chris, clearly you have been at ISC and the article starts well.
But think of this like an Apollo Moonshot program. When Kennedy announced that the US would land men on the moon before the end of the decade.. well NASA did not have Saturn 5 rockets sitting in a big shed somewhere....
Europe should be pushing the envelope, and constructing an exascale system. We already have outstanding centres in Germany, in Barcelona, and in Switzerland.
The UK of course has EPCC, Daresbury and RAL labs, Met Office
(I would say ECMWF but they're off to Italy) Plus the ARM based Isambard project in Bristol.
I do get your points about the lack of CPU foundries and DRAM foundries in Europe.
but the chips themselves don't have to be made in European territory.
Remember the titanium for the SR-71 was purchased from the Russkies!
I fully think that Europe can bring new ideas to Exascale. Both in hardware and importantly in the software.
And Exascale is power hungry. Maybe we should be looking at locating this thing somewhere near a green energy resource too.
Phil, USB-C handles not only the serial signalling. It handles power input, with various power profiles for different devices.
Plus:
10 Gbps Ethernet
HDMI graphics up to 4K AFAIK
Thunderbolt
So you can have a lightweight laptop which plugs into an external full feature GPU (or indeed any other PCI Express card)
Lusty, I agree. If you need a USB storage drive they have USB-C connectors now, and if I am not wrong some models have both that and normal USB.
If you need to use normal USB peripherals buy a USB-C hub which is the size of a packet of chewing gum. My Hperdrive adapter is for all intents and pusrposes a desktop docking station, which you can happily carry with you in the laptop case.
I dont have a Surface. I do have an HP Spectre though and USB-C is the dog's dangly bits.
HP Spectre also usefully has a normal USB-3 connector on the other side, with charge on sleep.
So you can charge your phone, or use a USB powered peripheral from the 'normal' USB port.
I can laso say that the Hyperdrive adapter I have is lovely. USB-C to the laptop. Then you get an HDMI graphics port out, two USBs and a USB-C charging port.
Indeed. The dual support model is becoming more common.
Look at PBSPro - they opensourced, and have a dual model of
*) you can't justify paying for support or you do not want to? Fine! Use the open source and you will help to keep the community on a wide base and help with enthusiasm on mailing lists (etc)
*) You want a supported product? Well here you are. And here's a number to call when you need us.
Look at Redhat / CentOS also. I don't think that Redhat have lost much if any revenue with CentOS. They have kept many big name institutes 'in the fold' so to speak, whi were never going to spring for thousands of RHEL or Redhat Desktop licenses.
> and, at least, this tech. wasn't shelved.
And that's why Open Source.
OK, this deal was for DDN to acquire personnel with skills and maintenance contracts.
But in general having Open Source means that a project can be revived if someone thinks the effort justifies it.
I would also mention Gridengine here.
I have installed and configured Mellanox kit for many years. Excellent company and good guys, both on the sales side and the technical support side.
I really, really hope whitepines is wrong. Todays high performance networking gear thrives on openness. On the Infiniband side Mellanox make improvements to their OFED stack which are available on their website but which also filter down to the OFED components which the Linus distributions use.
Smooth Newt - are you serious? A huge amount of effort has gone on over the years in networking scanning equipment such as this. They use a standard called DICOM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICOM
How would you propose to do this? Writing DICOM studies to removeable media then a radiographer puts the media in another terminal and reads it in to the PACS system?
What a waste of time and sheer drudgery for someone. Hopefully in your scheme the tags for the patient ID etc. are automatically read in.. rekeying anything like that is an invitation to a mixup.
Also what removeable media? I don't know the lifetime of MRI scanners these days I must admit.
When I worked in PET scanning we archived to DAT tapes and gave patients a copy of the scans on Sony Magneto Optical disks. That was many years ago, but I doubt you would be able to get a reader fro these MO disks today.
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