Originally posted by: kamper
cool lowpost. A couple of questions about crays for the people who have no clue about 'real computing' (like me):
-would crays run some sort of unix? developed in house at cray? is this os generally trusted?
Cray uses a Unix version for lots of stuff, they also have linux in their clusters they make. Cray is about HPC.
It's called Unicos, and is probably a system-v descedent like IBM's AIX.
-what purposes are they generally used for? I got the impression that they are not highly networked machines and are used more for number crunching than communications (in which case security wouldn't be as big a deal?). I really have no idea though.
Well you get things like x86 clusters, which are all about massive number crunches.
Then you have old-school mainframe types. Those guys are all about I/O. Massive amounts of information in massive numbers of controllers, controlling large disks in large numbers. Lots of database type stuff. Moving, sorting information. That sort of thing. But they are relatively weak in CPU power (they rely heavily on secondary controllers to control the disk controllers. Like your GPU in your vid card is used for 3-d stuff)
Well supercomputers can do both. Sorting thru massive amounts of data while doing large amounts of number crunching on that data. Also do that with 99.999999 percent reliability. That stuff is kinda weird for us x86 PC stuff. For instance at were I work we have a mainframe with a single mid-range proccessor. It's a "dual core" design, meaning that it has 2 cpu's in one. The extra cpu core isn't for extra power, it's just a backup to make sure that the first cpu doesn't make any mistakes.
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So if you think about it that's the sort of thing that they would use.
Security it critical, but they are probably kept mostly isolated. They would probably have a secondary database machine that hooks up to the supercomputer stuff that is used to interact with the users/researchers/whatever. Something that will build the queries to run on the supercomputer and to collect the results.
(Not that I know a whole lot about this sort of stuff, I am just speculating mostly. I wouldn't be suprised if I am completely wrong.)
and did anybody pick up what the guy in the OP (who was criticizing linux) thought we should use? I don't recall reading that he was advocating windows or anything else in specific.
In this specific case he was talking about RTOS. Real time operating systems. They run off of low-power proccessors like the Geode, Xscale or low-end PowerPC proccessors in embedded platforms. They are probably used mostly in weapon systems, in-car computers, and that sort of thing.
This character makes and sells RTOS systems for a living. He doesn't like the fact that people are choosing linux for embedded systems instead of his OSes.
It's not so suprising that people are using Linux, though. Lots of systems are created using 100% custom systems, and are built for specific purposes. Linux, I am guessing, provides a nice code base to work off of.
