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Comments: 158 +- Science: What Kind of Cloud Computing Project Costs $32M? on Wednesday October 14, @01:51PM
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coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy said today it will spend $32 million on a project that will deploy a large cloud computing test bed with thousands of Intel Nehalem CPU cores and explore commercial offerings from Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ultimately, the project, known as Magellan, will look at cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient way for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics, the DOE stated. Magellan will explore whether cloud computing can help meet the overwhelming demand for scientific computing. Although computation is an increasingly important tool for scientific discovery, and DOE operates some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, not all research applications require such massive computing power. The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."
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I assume this doesn't just include the cloud . . . (Score:2, Funny)
Large Magellanic Cloud (Score:5, Funny)
Just call it the Large Magellanic Cloud
Parent
oh oh (Score:2, Funny)
"The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."
This sounds like one of those far-fetched statements that more realistically would be answered as "eleventy-billion."
Wrong question. (Score:2)
As with many multi-million research grants, it looks less like valuable research and more like a handout.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Frankly I`m just suprised that the US government has a whole department dedicated to wasting energy.
Re:Wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly I`m just suprised that the US government has a whole department dedicated to wasting energy.
Sorry to break it to you, but most government departments are dedicated to wasting energy.
-jcr
Parent
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I don't follow. Handouts are good. We are in a liquidity trap. We have massive unemployment and a 0% interest rate. Perhaps cloud computing isn't what we should spend money on. However, the $32 million those people get for building cloud computing will very likely be spent on what those people should spend money on. Until we can raise interest rates (due to improved employment), you are either pro-government spending on crap like this, or you are a gold bug. And if you are a gold bug, you should *still* be
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I don't follow. Handouts are good. We are in a liquidity trap.
I've never heard the term "liquidity trap" before, but yes, we do need the government to pump more money into the economy.
However, there are much more effective ways, such as improving infrastructure (see 1930s and the building projects). More jobs are created for the same amount of cash (although lower salaries as they are blue color; still means less people filing unemployment). Less money is spent on products made overseas (you make your concrete locally, but those server parts are coming from Asia)
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Clearly we should do those things first. However, those things being a better expenditure do not make this thing a bad expenditure.
Re:Wrong question. (Score:4, Insightful)
The right question is who cares when the NSA is spending $2 billion [nybooks.com] just on the structure for a building (1 million square feet big) to house computers which will do who knows what for signals intelligence. Not to mention another facility in San Antonio being built which will be the size of the Alomodome.
Let's not care about that but nitpick over something ~1% the size and far less destructive to our liberties.
Parent
Re:Wrong question. (Score:5, Funny)
They have to have somewhere to park the black helicopters
Parent
Government Spending (Score:5, Informative)
You know, usually I'm against most government spending programs. They tend to be a huge waste.
But this... It sounds interesting and could actually benefit basic research- something this country sorely needs to support. My (perhaps incorrect) observation is that some groups like the DOE and DARPA tend to allocate funds to valuable research projects rather than pissing money away on terrible administrative database implementations. I guess I should keep in mind that the majority of DOE funding is used to build and maintain our nuclear weapons fleet.
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Actually this is very reasonable. They are building their own cloud instead of maintaining many departmental clusters.
The cost is to build their own cloud that can managed and probably secured.
That is why it costs so much.
Re:Government Spending (Score:4, Insightful)
The DOE and DARPA (and others) are huge users of HPC (high performance computing) applications. The have a vested interest in having the state of the art advance in parallel computing and so they tend to provide lots of research grants to fund that. They also routinely let outsiders use some of their computing facilities for the same reason (not all of their labs do classified work). There are many computing facilities that need enormous computing power as shown on the Top 500 list. [top500.org] But they are seeing that there are times where researchers need computational power, but not at such a large scale and not for long periods of time. If medium powered computational facilities could be made available to researchers cheaply and quickly, they would be widely used.
Parent
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And when will everyone wake up and realize that the government isn't granted authority by the constitution it is RESTRICTED by the constitution. I.e People are not granted free speech, the government is not supposed to make a law restricting speech etc. Thus the government is allowed to do everything except what the constitution prevents it from doing.
I will now take this time to promote my agenda. Every gun law is unconstitutional. Thanks.
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You are definitely in the minority w/ that interpretation of intent. If your interpretation was indeed correct, they could have saved a lot of ink by just leaving out all clauses but 3 and 18 in Article 1, Section 8.
Sadly in practice you're correct.
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And when will everyone wake up and realize that the government isn't granted authority by the constitution it is RESTRICTED by the constitution.
Actually, the constitution both grants and restricts the government. Congress has the authority to pass laws because the constitution grants it. The President is the commander-in-chief because the constitution grants him that authority. The constitution also restricts the scope of these powers by drawing (often vague) boundaries around those powers.
Whether individuals are granted freedoms by the constitution is often a controversial statement. When people get nominated by the Supreme Court, they are oft
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If they simulate nuclear reactions... (Score:5, Funny)
...would that be mushroom cloud computing?
$32 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
With that much money they could get a quarter of an F-22 fighter jet! How dare they spend it on research?
"What Kind of Cloud Computing Project Costs $32M?" (Score:3, Insightful)
The kind where the company who receives the contract is located in a particular Representative's district.
Salary (Score:2)
I imagine a large portion of that cost are salaries.
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Obviously you don't work for the U.S. Government or one of its contractors...
The trouble with supercomputing (Score:2)
The trouble with supercomputing is that, if you have to share the thing, you don't need it.
Supercomputers are worth the trouble if there are applications that need hours or days of time. But if you have many users sharing the thing, it's a waste. Price/performance tends to be maximized towards the upper end of mainstream machines. Supercomputers, with their custom hardware, tend to have lower price/performance than commodity machines. That's why web farms are made of commodity hardware.
Depends on the problem (Score:2)
There are problems which really need high memory bandwidth and don't fit on smaller-than-super computers, so a time slice on a supercomputer can be worth far more than full-time access to dedicated fast conventional computers. But those problems become less and less common as regular computers get bigger and faster - your laptop probably has a graphics processor that's faster than a Cray-2 by now...
Cloud Computing Joke (Score:2, Funny)
What's the bright side of cloud computing?
When the cloud goes down, it's a bright and sunny day.
$32,000,000... (Score:3, Insightful)
... sounds like a walk in the park compared to their other spending. I think that number is off by a factor of 100 or so.
In contrast, my small city (~40,000 people) in central Canada is spending ~$56,000,000 on a new Multiplex/Sports center. Supposed to have a new hockey rink, curling rinks, soccer area's with artificial turf.
I'd my city council spend it on a Cloud Computing Centre.
Re:$32,000,000... (Score:4, Funny)
I'd my city council spend it on a Cloud Computing Centre.
And schools to [intentionally left blank] how to use verbs in sentences.
Parent
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Hey, be nice... I'd my city, and accidentally all over the how to what too!
Imagine (Score:2)
Beowulf cluster of....
Oh, wait...
Never mind.
Extra cost of materials (Score:2)
Is not cloud (Score:2)
How about Air Traffic Control? (Score:3, Interesting)
BOINC? (Score:2)
What cloud project costs 32 M$? (Score:2)
Easy: the one where you are building the cloud.
Makes sense to me!
cloudy? (Score:2)
As the saying goes: keep your feet on the ground instead of your head in the clouds.
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You mean, what kind of [random project variable needing the levels of accountability and ass-covering that only $32m can provide] project costs less than $32m?
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The DOE stated.
Re:In socialist America (Score:5, Insightful)
and remember, kids: this thread was brought to you by a 40-year-old DARPA project.
Parent
Re:In socialist America (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Plus the thousands of other reasonable-sounding government funded projects that cost less than a dollar per taxpayer...
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Can I have $.21 from you? Just once, I promise. And no-one else is going to want the same, I assure you.
This is the same reasoning that allows $x.99 to be such a successful marketing ploy. Have you ever heard the phrase nickel and dimed to death? [reference.com]
Re:In socialist America (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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I (and the many generations after me) get something useful in return.
That's the real caveat, isn't it? Things like Social Security were great for a few generations, but before long you'll have to be above the average lifespan to collect because it is going broke. Never mind the fact that that single program alone accounts for about 1/3 of the US deficit. Think about that for a minute - you have to be 65 to collect, and the average life span is in the upper 70's. It's 1/3 of our national debt, yet it will only cover a little more than 1/10th the average citizen's lifetime
Re:In socialist America (Score:5, Informative)
It is NOT going broke. That's a myth thats been perpetrated since it's inception.
I remember when I was a teen, it was supposed to ahve been completly over whelmed by 85, then 2000, now it's 2015.
Read up nio the works of the peple that actually study it. It need MINOR adjustment from time to time but it
s not going to collapse.
Well over 99% of all federal project succeed, on time and within budget, and with less waste.
Failed projects do not equal waste.
"the hardware costs are probably not more than $1 million,"
for a project this size? you clearly have no experience building out systems.
We are tlaking about thousands of systems, and good ones not POS bottom of the line Dell's.
You need to pay for the infrastructure. Back bone, racks buildings and other sunk costs.
(Are you lumping this into administrative?)
Now we need people. They are using linux, so probably 1 fte per 200 machines.
Then system design.
Quite frankly, this is a good price for what they nede to do.
Maybe there will be 'cost over runs'. Over runs are often do to provider cost changes. Contract where something is delivered years after the beginning often have a clause to allow more money to cover those costs. I am talking about hard costs, cabling, concrete, etc . . .
The bidest example is rock. The price of rock can be volatile, so it's not uncommon to see bids where they amount paid in the contract is adjusted to cover the providers cost. If you don't do this, bids would be nearly impossible.
"It happens all the time."
no, but the bias is that it does because the 10,000 times it doesn't happen no one says anything.
I was in the private sector for a great many years, in the few years I've been in the public sector o have been constantly amazed at the tight book keeping, the amount of knowledge people have, the accountability, the incredibly high skill set.
Turns out there are very smart, dedicated and qualified people who take a government job becasue they are tired of not having a life.
Parent
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This is the best summary of project costs I've read. It applies, as the author said, to private as well as public projects.
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Not really. Pretty much all the big cloud computing companies build on open source, not just because it is cheaper, but because it is also better suited for the task / more adaptable.
The application software for big science related calculations isn't exactly off the shelf either, most of it is custom made.
Once you put together this kind of project, you can also hire some developers to build a software that runs on it, and are no longer restricted by home / small business development / deployment barriers.
SETI vs. Top500 supercomputing (Score:2, Redundant)
SETI works on what gets described in the trade as "embarrassingly parallel" problems - supercomputers deal with stuff that's harder to get good parallel speedup without throwing fancy hardware at it. DOE problems are often somewhere in between, and unfortunately the boinc/seti/screensaver approach to ad-hoc supercomputing isn't always good for applications like LINPAK, so it's hard to compare the real computing power. However, if you ignore that (:-), most of the top computers in the Top500 list are doing
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