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Monday, November 14, 2005 |
SC05
I've been very busy for, oh, the past few years, really. But even more
so since early Saturday. I'm attending a new conference, at least new
to me. Super Computing, also known as SC05 is happening in
Seattle this week. Things here kicked off on Saturday and continue right on
through until Friday, November 18th. I didn't arrive until late
Saturday night and registered early on Sunday morning.
What is it with Sunday conference sessions? I noticed that last month's
Internet 2 confab had a Sunday component. I've been attending this sort
of gathering for a couple of decades now and never been associated with
organizations that have major activities on Sunday. So I've been having
trouble wrapping my mind around what day of the week it is. Essentially what it boils
down to for me is -- no weekend.
I'm anxious to spend time with conference participants and see what is
going on with advanced, high-performance computing. Yesterday was
interesting. Just reading through the program was enlightning, even
challenging. It's not that the words are difficult. But understanding
the context is something else. Super computing draws a different crowd.
For example, I sat in on an I/O tutorial yesterday. Somebody "claimed", without any apparent BS, that he was dealing
with well over a petabyte (whatever that is) of storage and was rapidly
moving to 2. (Okay, before you email me to tell me that a petabyte is
1000 terabytes, just know that I do understand the definition,
But I
don't really know what it is, just like I understand the concept of a
billion dollars, but I really don't know what it would be like to have
that much money in my investment account.) At UEN we have a couple of
terabytes, so it is all a question of scale. Determining just when/if
I/O monitoring tools will help us at UEN is interesting to contemplate.
How do we compare our different environments and make any real
comparisons?
The next few day will be very interesting. There is much to observe and think about.........
3:02:49 PM 
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© 2005 Jim Stewart
Last Update: 12/14/05; 10:59:41 AM
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