From: "Chris Stoddard" Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm Subject: Re: Practical Applications Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 14:51:49 -0500 Organization: http://www.supernews.com, The World's Usenet: Discussions Start Here Message-Id: <6vb81e$aec$1@supernews.com> References: <6r1vqb$639$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6v9egq$stc$1@supernews.com> I think probably our definitions of "Practical Applications" are different. You make a couple of good points here, but I'm not doing large scale simulations or scientific/mathematical problem solving. I want to be able to do more mundane things like sort and search large databases or backup my network using compression software and not have take three days to accomplish. What is happening here is we are seeing the evolution of a system. For example, when I first got into Linux way back in the days of the .99 kernel, if you did not know how to use Emacs or were a C programmer, Linux was pretty useless to you. But as time went on, more applications were written and ported until it reached its current state and is now making a penetration into mainstream. I believe the same process is taking place with the Beowolf Clusters, Its a cool idea who's time has come, but again if you are not a programmer it is less than useful. This however will change in the years to come, eventually some Hacker will need to run grep on many large files and he will port grep to be used with PVM and all will be right with the universe. It is possible as well, that someone will have a moment of brilliance and figure out how to build PVM or MPI into the Linux kernel and parallel file systems will become the norm. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not a 14 year old kid who wants to make Quake run on a couple of 486's, I don't think that is very likely to happen. Games may drive the Wintel market, but they do not drive the UNIX market. In the mean time I'll just have to dust off my old C programming books and see if I can do it myself, not likely, but it will keep me off the streets and out of the bars. -Chris Stoddard "Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine." Clark Dorman wrote in message ... **SNIP** >No, people are doing real work with real applications. You just don't >see them. Why? Because they are specialized and people who need >ScaLAPACK (for example) are working on specific mathematical and >scientific problems. People have not been producing shrink-wrap >software in the area because there is not a market for commercial >software that does these sorts of things. > >-- >Clark Dorman "Evolution is cleverer than you are." >http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/dorman/D.html -Francis Crick