"Not that Gordon"
F-ing brilliant!
HPD: just what we need in the computing industry – another acronym. But this is the term that Michael Norman, interim director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), is using to discuss how HPD (High Performance Data) goes hand in hand with HPC. If you have both HPC and HPD, then you’ve got something that can be an …
1. 64GB of DRAM isn't a lot, over 32 cores that's 2GB/core, way lower than we'd use in Hadoop land.
2. the SSD is nice, but it's the data rate that's the issue. If each 4TB of SSD comes from 8 500GB SSDs, then you still have one disk channel for every 4 cores; if it's from 16x250GB disks then you are down to to one channel/two cores, still way worse than the two channels/core data that again, we in Hadoop land think is good. Admittedly, the goal in Hadoop is to minimise seek time, which is less of an issue in SSD, but still there's not enough ram or IO for the CPUs for my liking.
3. The article says "this is code that doesn't parallelise". But that's wrong. it has to be for parallelised code, otherwise there is no point having >1 core. You'd be better off with one Itanium or Power 7 CPU with all the RAM and SSD.
acronym (ˈækrənɪm)
— n
a pronounceable name made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words; for example, UNESCO for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or RADAR for RAdio Detection And Ranging
HPD is not pronounceable and is thus a TLS (three letter abbreviation) much loved by geeks, middle managers and consultants. I know - I have been all three.