I find Pablo Picasso’s famous response on computers, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers,” interesting and provocative. I also believe there is a grain of truth in that statement — namely, that it’s really important to ask the right questions of computers. I have a hard time with the useless part, however.
I find Pablo Picasso’s famous response on computers, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers,” interesting and provocative. I also believe there is a grain of truth in that statement — namely, that it’s really important to ask the right questions of computers. I have a hard time with the useless part, however.
We ask important and world-changing questions of computers (and clusters) everyday. I call these the what questions. For instance, “What is the lowest energy state of this molecule?” or “What happens when I try an align these two genome sequences?” or “What does this seismic data tell us about possible oil in the ground?”. These questions yield important information.
The How Questions
When discussing HPC clusters, and computing in general, other questions arise. I call these the how questions. These question often need to be answered before computation begins. For instance, “How do I solve this problem quickly?” or “How do I solve this problem within my research budget?” or “How to program 128 cores?”
The answers often begin with hardware choices and end up with software issues (i.e. telling the computer how to solve a problem). The how questions are often include many dimensions and can have a lasting effect on future decisions and costs. That decision to write everything in Turbo Pascal probably seemed like a a good idea at the time. Thinking carefully about how we do things in HPC is important and, as I found out last week, goes…
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