Hi,
"Why is it that 8 of the world's top 10 supercomputers are powered by
GNU/Linux?"
there are lots of reasons to chose GNU/Linux for supercomputers, but
from some practical experience I've had let me list down a few.
One of the primary reasons, that I've seen is the fact that GNU/Linux
has more exposure than all other variants of unix around. It is
usually a great misconception that super-computers are used by
uber-geeks, sadly thats not true.
Most of the super-computers (the top 8 and the ones that I've worked
on) are run primarily by scientists with a considerable non-cs
background. And the last thing they would want is to be put up in an
environment thats alien to them. Most of them however are used to
linux at some-level (all thanks to LaTeX). And they are comfortable
with linux. Since most projects are approved by scientists at
top-posts, putting Linux would increases the chances of getting a nod
for the contract rather than say OpenBSD or NetBSD. (chances are high
that most of these people haven't heard about that). Btw, I am not
bad-mouthing scientists here, they are just the smartest people
around, And its not really their line of work to care about
"technicalities" like OS issues.
Secondly, one thing that puts linux ahead of the other free nix's
around is the fact that there are many scientific-libraries that work
just like that on linux. Though most of them have been ported to most
other unixes, the "latest and greatest" version often comes out first
on linux.
Third reason, (though it doesn't necessarily pertain to the top-8
supercomputers, but to smaller ones that are regularly used in some
form of research or the other) is that sometimes, A bigger
super-computer is usually shared between a couple of labs, whereas,
these smaller labs often have their own 16-node compute cluster or
8-node compute cluster. And these clusters are invariably linux
(probably running debian or fedora). The reason there is its a lot
easier to install debian or fedora rather than say openbsd or freebsd
and these people would like to have a "home" environment when the ssh
into the super-computers node.
Other Things that doesn't directly relate to the topic at hand.
1. On Windows :
Many people are under the misconception that windows doesn't fit well
in the super-computing area. But strangely some "HP"
(high-performance) versions are on offer by microsoft. The problem
seems to be that the os chokes on handling extremely high bandwidth
lines, rather than any inherent instability in the os itself.
(weakest-link kinda logic i believe).
2. On Supercomputers
The top-8 mentioned above takes into consideration only
super-computers based on speed. But somehow, i feel its too narrow a
criterion. If you take into consideration like accessibility, storage
area clusters, web-servers (on server farms) etc.. I seriously doubt
wether we will see Linux dominating. (I guess OpenBSD/FreeBSD will
start winning). They are all super computers in their own-right, just
that they don't do massive number crunching in the conventional sense.
Regards
Vishnu Vyas.
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website : http://vishnuvyas.wordpress.com