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Don't take this the wrong way, but the article's data doesn't say what they want it to. While it is true that Linux can be stripped down farther than Windows (
by amalcon 17y ago
Don't take this the wrong way, but the article's data doesn't say what they want it to. While it is true that Linux can be stripped down farther than Windows (and thus do raw calculations faster), that isn't necessarily the only reason that supercomputers use Linux.
For example, Windows licenses for supercomputers are very expensive, as historically they're server editions priced by CPU count. This is a drop in the bucket where supercomputers are concerned, but this would mean that Windows would need to be better in some other way: even if it's not much, people don't generally like to pay for nothing. The difference could almost mean another CPU in some cases.
Also, while Windows has much better consumer hardware support, this aspect of compatibility is not relevant to supercomputers. Linux has much better support for different hardware architectures (the so-called "Playstation 3 processor" can run Linux, but not Windows). This will typically mean additional cost savings for a Linux setup, as they won't need to pay the x86 premium (in terms of $$/processing power).
I'd place tunability at a distant second to hardware costs, and software costs at a distant third. I'm just curious why more of them don't go with BSD.
- randomwalker 17y agoI think "users" of supercomputers, i.e, application developers, would on average greatly prefer Linux to BSD. Ironically, it's probably the same reason that consumer devices come with Windows.
- scott_s 17y agoLinux installs on supercomputers often aren't "stripped down" when compared to a typical server install. Instead, they're customized, often at the kernel level. A Linux install on a PS3 is mostly just a stock PowerPC kernel and user-land binaries, with some kernel patches for communication with the Cell's SPEs. Such customization is infeasible in Windows. (It's possible, just really hard. You could try to get Microsoft to do it, but that's unlikely. Microsoft does allow certain groups to get access to the source code, but that's not easy. And even with access, I assume it's hard to make changes since, as proprietary code, there's less global knowledge and resources to help you.) That is the key reason why Linux is used instead of Windows for supercomputers: customization. As for Linux versus BSD, the short answer is Linux is more popular. The long answer - why Linux is more popular - I don't know.