[Beowulf] Does computation threaten the scientific method?

[Christopher Samuel]

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On 29/03/12 22:58, Douglas Eadline wrote:

> I am glad some one is talking about this. I have wondered about
> this myself, but never had a chance to look into it.

IIRC this issue was discussed at CCGrid 2005 in Cardiff, but
provenance and reproducibility are hard - we need to keep upgrading to
get security fixes but we get other changes into the bargain.

You could work around that by having jobs run in VM images that are
set in stone, but then you will take a performance penalty (from a
small amount to large amount, depending on the level of virtualisation
you need).  Then of course there's the issue of hardware errata, not
to mention availability if you ran it on an Alphaserver SC in 2002..

cheers.
Chris
- -- 
    Christopher Samuel - Senior Systems Administrator
 VLSCI - Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
 Email: samuel at unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 (0)3 903 55545
         http://www.vlsci.unimelb.edu.au/

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