From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:05:50 -0700 From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" In-reply-to: To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-id: <49CD85FE.6090306@Sun.COM> References: User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (X11/20080807) Subject: Re: [9fans] plan9 for calculations Topicbox-Message-UUID: cb6d858c-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 03/27/09 14:31, Rudolf Sykora wrote: > Hello everybody, > > I noticed there are some thoughts about using plan9 on supercomputers. > For me supercomputers are usually used to do some heavy calculations. > And this leads me to a question. What software is then used for > programming these calculations? (I mean e.g. linear algebra, i.e. > matrix, calculations.) Where can one read about that? > If you are talking about established practices then supercomputing *almost* always means Infiniband+MPI (managed by a grid engine). On fat nodes (the kind of machines Sun used to sell) you might also find OpenMP. But there will always be MPI, since doesn't mean how fat the node is -- the cluster is fatter. On the language side I've seen predominantly Fortran and C++, although Ron was telling me horror stories about Python and some other goo. As far as the libraries go: linpack is almost always there, but the good place to take a look at what's relevant is here: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-0497 > PS.: It could be that plan9, being more a os-research system than > anything else, is simply no suitable for such a use (there are no > plotting libraries, other utilities). Perhaps it's not a good idea at > all to try to use plan9 like that because it would be more work than > anything. Maybe using linux for such things with all its tools is just > ok. If you share this idea, just say it too, please. > My personal take is that Plan9's forte might be the sane clustering of things. MPI and grid engines is really quite horrible, but it is pervasive. Thanks, Roman.