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From: john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Missing the whole point (the Fortran vs. C debate)
Message-ID: <1990Dec3.064134.7611@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 06:41:34 GMT
References: <28548@usc> <7552@lanl.gov> <TMB.90Dec2200247@bambleweenie57.ai.mit.edu>
Sender: John K. Prentice
Organization: University of New Mexico Physics Dept., Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 32

In article <TMB.90Dec2200247@bambleweenie57.ai.mit.edu> tmb@bambleweenie57.ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:

[in responding to a comment by Jim Giles...]
>
>This is the economics of computing for some people. If you pay
>for your Cray time and if your programs take days to run even
>on a Cray, then you may be concerned with speeding them up
>by a factor of 2 or 3.
>
>In our environment, we use workstations (and the Connection Machine).
>Computer time is essentially free. For many applications, it makes
>little difference to me whether my program finishes in 1 hour or 1
>day, and if I have really serious number crunching to do, I can often
>split up the work among a number of workstations. I think many
>scientists are in similar situations.
>

I wish things were so simple.  I run on a SunSparc, a Cray YMP, a
Cray 2, a Connection Machine, and a couple miscellaneous parallel
machines (mostly research machines).  I have plenty of computer time
and in general the actual cost is not the major problem I face with
having jobs run a long time.  The problem is that while a calculation
is crunching away, I am essentially idle waiting for an answer.  I
can't decide what I need to do next until this one finishes.  When
calculations take hours or days, this is a real impediment to my
productivity.  Unfortunately, calculations often take weeks and this
can be a show stopper.  Making codes run faster is a major priority
for any scientific researcher who has long running calculations and
actually looks at his results before proceeding.

John K. Prentice
john@unmfys.unm.edu


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