[9fans] "FAWN: Fast array of wimpy nodes" (was: Plan 9 - the next 20 years)

[John Barham <jbarham@gmail.com>]

I certainly can't think ahead 20 years but I think it's safe to say
that the next 5 (at least doing HPC and large-scale web type stuff)
will increasingly look like this:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22504/?a=f, which talks
about building a cluster from AMD Geode (!) nodes w/ compact flash
storage.  Sure it's not super-fast, but it's very efficient per watt.
If you had more cash you might substitute HE Opterons and SSD's but
the principle is the same.

The general trend is that capital expenditures for computing are going
down but operating expenditures are going up.  Indeed if you sign up
for something like Amazon's EC2 service, your initial capital outlay
is exactly $0.  (I vividly recall paying over $3000 for a low-end
server and $300/month in colo fees back in early 2003 when I had a
hosting business.)

Apparently they use the above cluster to implement some type of
distributed memcached style cache.  Here is the page listing the many
clients for memcached:
http://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/Clients.  However, if w/ Plan
9 you implement the interface to the cache as a 9p service, it is
automatically available to any language that can do file I/O (heck,
even Haskell, if you can slog through the advanced type theory).  So
your software development costs go down.

Another change that levels the playing field in Plan 9's favor is the
clock-speed wall and the move to multi-core chips.  Soon everyone is
going to have to re-write their software to make it concurrent if they
want to make it run faster.  And concurrency is hard, especially when
the predominant model is preemptive threads.  Here again Plan 9's
technical advantages of its lightweight kernel and CSP threading model
confers an economic advantage.

I think the key to successfully being able to use Plan 9 commercially
is to use its unique technical advantages to exploit disruptive
economic changes.  Economics beats technology every time (e.g.,
x86/amd64 vs. MIPS/Itanium, Ethernet vs. Infiniband, SATA vs. SCSI) so
don't try to fight it.

  John