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I dont know. My close relative works as infrastructure engineer at major automotive company, and about every 2 years they are buying new computation clusters (t
by MaxikCZ 3y ago
I dont know. My close relative works as infrastructure engineer at major automotive company, and about every 2 years they are buying new computation clusters (think tens to low hundreds thousands of cores, along with network and storage infra). Every time a public tender is held, and every time there are several companies promising to achieve required results with whatever hardware.
Last decade I know of three different firms being selected, where they guaranteed to succeed on speed requirements (some even saying its tested inhouse), only to admit failure after year of trying, taking all their hardware back with no pay. IBM at higher price was selected as backup, and every time was the only firm actually able to deliver on their promises and meet the benchmark requirements.
I often see IBM getting a lot of flak here for whatever reasons, just sharing some counterweight.
- tw04 3y agoIt seems EXTREMELY unlikely that Cray would be unable to meet performance requirements and promises. They've consistently done so for decades in all manner of government and private institutions.
- MaxikCZ 3y agoCray was never selected. Either they didn't submit an offer, or their price was too high.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoI've sat in on plenty of B2B sales pitches, and am fairly certain that no salesman ever believes that you will actually run those tests. And if even if you did, that you would actually throw away a full year of integration work to go with the backup plan. Plus, having seen/heard a lot about how salesman are employed - all too often their commission/compensation is locked in when the contract is signed. They get their money regardless of what happens a year or two down the road, and are thus incentivized to "misrepresent" performance and capabilities.
- stonogo 3y agoAny sane HPC program has an acceptance testing phase in the delivery terms of the contract, with specific penalties (IBM calls them "considerations") for failing to meet the technical requirements. Sales teams in the HPC are extremely aware of this. Blue Waters is a great example of throwing away years of work and pivoting to the backup plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Waters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Waters
- singleshot_ 3y agoUgliest day in a salesman’s life: the day he learns about “clawback.”
- stonogo 3y agoNo, they've consistently paid penalties for not doing so, especially during the decade or so their network stack tended to implode, taking the shared filesystem with it. They also benefited, during those decades, from an NSA program explicitly designed to fund US HPC OEMs in order to maintain American industry leadership in the space. I think it was a good policy, but it doesn't mean that Cray was hitting home runs right up to the HPE acquisition.
- fweimer 3y agoHPE Cray are involved with Aurora: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(supercomputer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(supercomputer) As far as I understand it, the project saw substantial delays so far.
- wmf 3y agoThe Aurora delays were clearly caused by Intel.
- Aperocky 3y agoBut the world is moving away from mainframes and into commodity hardware, even without considering the "cloud" aspect. It's a dying business to be in, even if IBM excel in it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]