http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/12/08/exascale-what-about-exalead/ by Stephen E. Arnold Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:05:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/12/08/exascale-what-about-exalead/comment-page-1/#comment-83098 Eric Rogge Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:11:46 +0000 http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/?p=9743#comment-83098 Thanks Stephen for the reference. Indeed, Exalead's original design goal was to ultimately index and search Exabyte data sets (10 power 19 bytes). Hence the company name. We're well on our way, using commodity server technology to do this. I think there are a couple of design challenges which are not mutually exclusive. Challenge #1 is designing software that, regardless of hardware architecture, can handle that amount of data. We're on that at Exalead. The other challenge is creating a performance/price leading architecture for that. That's Challenge #2. Commodity hardware architectures have their strengths and weaknesses. Low design costs and high volume manufacturing keep amortized design and fixed costs low for commodity system-based architectures. On the other hand I/O inefficiencies, due to sub-optimal I/O back planes can drive system quantities up. Systems designed to solve this problem may be cost effective if the design costs, fixed costs and margins are held in check. Thanks Stephen for the reference. Indeed, Exalead’s original design goal was to ultimately index and search Exabyte data sets (10 power 19 bytes). Hence the company name. We’re well on our way, using commodity server technology to do this. I think there are a couple of design challenges which are not mutually exclusive. Challenge #1 is designing software that, regardless of hardware architecture, can handle that amount of data. We’re on that at Exalead. The other challenge is creating a performance/price leading architecture for that. That’s Challenge #2. Commodity hardware architectures have their strengths and weaknesses. Low design costs and high volume manufacturing keep amortized design and fixed costs low for commodity system-based architectures. On the other hand I/O inefficiencies, due to sub-optimal I/O back planes can drive system quantities up. Systems designed to solve this problem may be cost effective if the design costs, fixed costs and margins are held in check.

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