| Re: Mac Clusters & IDL [message #54187 is a reply to message #54036] |
Wed, 23 May 2007 13:57  |
Brian Larsen
Messages: 270
Registered: June 2006
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Senior Member |
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Trae,
as another former grad student I would recommend more long walks
(preferably with your wife) while you let the code run on a single
machine. Any setup you do on computers is a huge one time investment
with little payoff for you unless you are planing on sticking around
MSU for long enough to make up for the investment. I think the
formula is pretty simple
[(decrease in run time) * (number of times you run it)] /
[(time required to setup and maintain the system) + (time spent
recoding)]
The number on the bottom is large and according to Murphy always comes
when you have posters and talks due so if the numerator isn't
sufficiently big to make this ratio like 4 I wouldn't bother. Any
guess at actual numbers is a guess as I have done lots of linux but
very little mac, but you are easily looking at a meltdown once a month
that sucks up one whole day, and setup and testing will take the
better part of week. So over the course of 6 months this is easily 88
hours (40 + 6*8). So the savings in run time had better be 352 hours
or more.
Well enough ranting, papers don't write themselves, spacecraft don't
build themselves, and certainly paperwork doesn't move from one side
of my desk to the other by itself.
Cheers,
Brian
--
------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------
Brian A Larsen
RBSP-ECT Instrument Suite Scientist
Boston University
Center for Space Physics
725 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 506
Boston, MA 02215-1401
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