[Info-vax] Hoff's Boot Camp report available

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On Behalf
> Of IanD via Info-vax
> Sent: 25-Nov-16 12:01 AM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: IanD <iloveopenvms at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Hoff's Boot Camp report available
> 
> On Friday, November 25, 2016 at 12:47:48 AM UTC+11, Phillip
> Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> > In article
> <561c9cb1$0$8242$b1db1813$145976f0 at news.astraweb.com>,
> JF
> > Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> >
> > > However, I wouldn't so quickly dismiss graphics and I would
> prefer
> > > to see VSI saying they are going to listen to customers and
> > > potential customers for what the priorities should me. This
is
> more
> > > "politically correct" and doesn't close doors that could
possibly
> > > pan out as being very profitable.
> >
> > VSI has said that they would support the on-chip graphics, so
I
> can
> > still run DECwindows under CDE.  :-)  Is it worth trying to
> compete in
> > high-end graphics?
> 
> Compete in the high end workstation market? No point going
> there IMO
> 

There is a lot of painful history associated with highly
proprietary drivers that came out with each new graphics card. 

That is changing rapidly whereby vendors are starting to use more
open source based standards such as Vulkan (next generation
OpenGL)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvioALNs_Bc
"... now it is much easier to create cross platform games"

That will make it easier in the future should someone (not
necessarily VSI) decide to support graphics on OpenVMS. 

> Compete in the really high end, as in the HPC camp with GPU
> farms, that's been won by the linux camp mostly and the HPC
> camp buy eco systems, not just an OS in isolation
> 

HPC is extremely price sensitive to up front licensing costs,
which is a big historical factor of using Linux. I suspect the
high upfront licensing costs with OpenVMS may change with OpenVMS
X86-64. 

HPC is also challenged with high latency times associated with
LAN networks, so that is why they have moved to Infiniband and
/or RoCEv2 for low latency, high bandwidth internode
communications. The HPC world is moving from many smaller systems
to fewer, but larger systems that have high speed workload
accelerators integrated with larger numbers of cores and TB scale
memory. The PowerX consortium is moving full speed ahead in this
area. 

Reference:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/11/20/networks-drive-hpc-harder
-compute/

Also reference:
http://bit.ly/2fMkwkA
" One of the most notable (at least to me) is the 200Gb/s HDR
InfiniBand that Mellanox plans to introduce early next year. It
looks interesting, and in fact, I almost entitled this article A
Work-Delivering Network, because that is its focus. The real
measure of a system is enabling as much work possible with the
best economics."

Support for one or both of RoCEv2/Infiniband is the entry level
bar to being able to participate in HPC. The added benefit of
RoCEv2 (RDMA over converged Ethernet) is that it would also
potentially provide a huge reduction in large cluster DLM
overhead which would benefit other VSI Customers as well.

> If VSI is willing to extend OpenVMS to be a hybrid OS with
GPU's
> making up it's compute offerings, then maybe but I doubt they
> are going to be in a position to do this for a very long time
> 
> There's even work being done on bringing back vector processing
> into the IT picture! Didn't the Vax have some support for
vector
> operation support?
> 
> It's the synergy of having access to all these technologies
that
> add's value.
> 
> VMS has got a lot of work to catch up on in the areas it
> abandoned long ago but at least we are moving forward - gotta
> be grateful for this at least :-)
> 

In the later days of DEC, and certainly with Compaq and HP,
OpenVMS was the "Cinderella" platform - guess who was the evil
step mother and bad sisters? 

Good news is that there was a happy ending and Cinderella finally
broke free to go her own way.

:-)

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com