[boost] Re: Boost Mathematicians

From: John Phillips (phillips_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-06-05 14:47:21

David B. Held wrote:
> 
> You might.  But if you're buying 100 hours of time on a supercomputer
> at $100/hr. (not sure what going rates are), 10% could mean the
> difference between $10,000 and $9,000.  If we're talking $1,000/hr.
> or many more hours (like a month), then the absolute savings is
> obviously much greater.  If we aren't targeting the high-end
> computing market, then perhaps this is all irrelevant.  But if you want
> the best mathematicians in the world to take these libraries seriously,
> then perhaps we do want to target the high-performance computing
> market.
> 
> Dave
> 

   In computational physics there is a bit of folklore about the scale 
of problems people are willing to attempt. The largest problems done 
take about a month on the best machines available. In that setting, 10% 
is a big deal and 100% is completely unacceptable.
   However, if someone is not doing the most complex computational 
problems there is not nearly as much pressure for performance. At the 
physics department that I am a part of, much research computation is 
done on personal computers and in run times of less than an hour. In 
that setting, if you don't have to do too many runs, 10% is not a big deal.
                        John