From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD53BBBAF for ; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:11:45 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AhEBAGfFMEvRVdvikGdsb2JhbACRZYkkPwEBAQEJCQwHEwOrB4EyhUOIVQECAwWELgSDGA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.47,438,1257116400"; d="scan'208";a="42610008" Received: from mail-ew0-f226.google.com ([209.85.219.226]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 22 Dec 2009 22:11:45 +0100 Received: by ewy26 with SMTP id 26so3114313ewy.3 for ; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:11:44 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :from:date:message-id:subject:to:content-type; bh=OpGkiq6EWCtw3jADwKUx1yZbQILM8z2j5Ya8Lsv/OaE=; b=Dhma2H/+zGp02232yRjuxNV1RM9rzDANXR56me8mZBlk1Q0aCK7rBEG9VYV+N/aRW5 cWsT/y/cSIn1PKnGIJRx20m2a8yMwyAZez5mEewYZIwAQxoFB8Y0bTnfp+5GX3NskYkM uVe5Z+EPj7hgyp8qIw1aWhKkSfeSfTHVGradM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to :content-type; b=pNxll/s+4rGJQb7XYpDS1ozIhv0qmmvNDzQRm0h9gPYBD0C2Gj2CL6slX0dQC7YaHD JxvtZohhaKk5wBHvLAtITpmOTwG9S7SNoXNAQv1VVLcteXZCnW/AMNHZTyuLoebZkzy2 xMDB471RueGM50IJQtSaS9ZPgmlNhrMzzb8e0= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.88.75 with SMTP id z53mr3207521wee.46.1261516304077; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:11:44 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <200912221949.47285.jon@ffconsultancy.com> References: <3d13dcfc0911250305i43a684e4u5a96ec420b6ce350@mail.gmail.com> <3ae3aa420912212040i23309f7cw4485db33352c1853@mail.gmail.com> <320e992a0912220511s6e5f271ftb0a72b73e9daf437@mail.gmail.com> <200912221949.47285.jon@ffconsultancy.com> From: Mike Lin Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:11:24 -0500 Message-ID: <2a1a1a0c0912221311q2dfeb708r5b82f7b73a0a43c4@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Looking for information regarding use of OCaml in scientific computing and simulation To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 parallelism:01 speedup:01 2009:98 measly:98 wrote:01 caml-list:01 theoretical:03 slightly:03 generally:04 distributed:05 simulation:05 dec:05 computing:05 computing:05 On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Jon Harrop wrote: > Sure but it is worth remembering that distributed parallelism across clusters > is a tiny niche compared to multicores. I think the balance is slightly different than this in scientific/research computing (the original subject of this thread). At least in the U.S., a ten-page proposal will garner at least a million core-hours at a TeraGrid site for pretty much any non-crackpot academic project, free of charge (the systems are funded by the gov't). NSF graduate fellows get like 100k core-hours just to mess around, no PI and no particular project proposal needed. The infrastructure, documentation, and tech support at the TeraGrid sites generally assume MPI-based jobs, and give you access to [tens of] thousands of cores. That's a pretty compelling resource if the alternative is the relatively measly theoretical speedup from a multicore (8x, etc.). Mike