Comments on: Cloudy Outlook

By: Tomer Gabel

Tomer Gabel — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:07:13 +0000

Can ARM/PPC/some of the other major platforms be reliably emulated on a VM? Per-CPU cost on EC2 is so low it might actually be computationally practical.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:24:10 +0000

You’re right about the eye-opening bit– I hadn’t heard of EC2 yet. I have known about S3 for awhile and it seems to fit the goal of the cloud-as-storage paradigm, which is what cloud computing largely seems to be about, per my understanding (and the definition seems very fluid which was the source of my initial frustration).

Something like EC2 could really turn FATE on its head– I’m envisioning an instance to govern each compiler/CPU configuration. Though this would likely only accommodate x86_32/x86_64, those are easily the most important architectures.

By: Tomer Gabel

Tomer Gabel — Mon, 25 May 2009 06:36:10 +0000

Well, in that case I direct your attention to Amazon S3/EC2 — both grid- (or cloud-, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it-) based software solutions, one being a data grid and the other a computational grid. Although the Amazon implementation has significant drawbacks (particularly incoming/outgoing network bandwidth costs), the mere availability of such services is eye-opening.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:30:38 +0000

Tomer, you seem to be taking the cloud paradigm to a whole other level. In most interpretations I have read, cloud computing is just about storing the data somewhere “out there”. Your solution seems to be about transparent parallel computing. I have some idea how to accomplish the data storage goal, even if I don’t agree with it. The transparent parallelism is a bit loftier.

By: Tomer Gabel

Tomer Gabel — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:50:58 +0000

I suppose it depends on your definition of “cloud computing.” In practical terms, if/when my mom uses the term “in the cloud” what she means is “in the internets” and that’s all she will ever know. As far as she’s concerned it doesn’t matter if the data is stored on an Amazon storage grid or on Facebook’s servers.

What /does/ matter is that cloud computing is becoming increasingly commercially viable and increasingly accessible, and the technology opens up radical new development/deployment paradigms, which in turns opens up opportunities for new commercial services — Google search is an example of such a process. SkyDrive is another example, one that uses “in the cloud” as part of its marketing jargon. The question of data ownership is moot because the data is inherently coupled to the service.

As a developer, though, the impact can be tremendous; with a cloud-based architecture you could (for example) get FATE to scale freely, no matter how many configurations you need, assuming of course they can be hosted in the cloud: just create the correct VM image, fire up another node and let the test suite run. A commercial backer for ffmpeg could then take FATE, add a hundred different combinations/configurations and get an entire integration lab up and running in almost no time and without budgeting an entire staff to keep it that way.

I guess my point is that for certain types of software, particularly highly parallelizable code with scaling needs that vary greatly over time, compute clouds can be quite exciting. As this will become increasingly obvious, you might as well simply ignore the marketing.

By: Jim Leonard

Jim Leonard — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:24:18 +0000

Cloud computing is a wonderful convenience and a great idea, but it should not be your only copy of your work, and should never be used for anything you would be very upset if everyone in the world suddenly had a copy.

By: Kostya

Kostya — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:01:27 +0000

In you case it’s portable computing. Cloud computing is rather whenever you are, you only ssh to your home machine (but which does not belong to you) and work through it ;) And you are right – that’s another term for work being done elsewhere.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:42:06 +0000

“What this has to do” is that you may have proposed a reasonable alternative to the cloud computing fad. Suddenly, all that work we heard about some months ago with various Linux distros aiming for the crown of “fastest boot time” don’t seem so silly.

By: compn

compn — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:39:12 +0000

8gb flash drive + knoppix (or other bootable live ‘cd’) + computer = your own OS/desktop on any computer you want (that you can reboot from usb). maybe also sync with some kind of central server with your new files.

or maybe just a vmware image with your own os, not sure which is the current fad.

what this has to do with ‘cloud computing’ i have no idea.