By: Ireland (boh.delete@this.outlook.ie), January 24, 2017 6:16 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
RichardC (tich.delete@this.pobox.com) on January 24, 2017 4:06 pm wrote:
>
> It's a risky thing to do. But so what ? People attempt risky innovative stuff all the
> time. And yes, a lot of them fail. The idea isn't obviously bad, it seems to me that if
> it's done well it could find a profitable market - and almost by definition, to succeed
> in competition against Intel you *need* to be looking for a market that is either a bad
> technical match for Intel's technologies, *or* is too small for them to get serious about
> it.
>
Competing against non-consumption, I think is the phrase that business school people would use. I.e. Introduce a product into some market, where users are currently totally under-served, or un-served. I'd award Richard a good point here, from the business intelligence point of view. Very interesting 'back and forth' discussion - where two contributors are able to offer two very different views on the engineering and technology. Not bad at all.
The question Aaron may have a view on, is whether or not these under-served, or un-served potential consumers do exist out there in the world of HPC? I.e. The kinds of people that we don't think about as HPC users at all, right now - that's essentially what competing against non-consumption means. It also means, that the technological solution doesn't have to be radically brilliant and all of the edges ironed out of it either. That provides one with space and time, to develop one's game - instead of trying to go straight in, head-to-head in the server space - with the 'incumbent' (again, another phrase that they use in business-ology).
I'd be interested to listen to Aaron's take on this question though, while the debate still has some 'heat' left in it. The reason I ask this is simple. I come across young university grad's nowadays, with bulging foreheads and ability to create simulation models, that model various climatic or weather conditions - and they're trying to run this stuff on three year old laptop hardware at the moment. They've never even heard of Xeon Phi, or Google analytics cloud service for that matter. I think there might be a significant well, of 'non-consumers' out there in HPC, and it isn't getting smaller, it's getting bigger.
>
> It's a risky thing to do. But so what ? People attempt risky innovative stuff all the
> time. And yes, a lot of them fail. The idea isn't obviously bad, it seems to me that if
> it's done well it could find a profitable market - and almost by definition, to succeed
> in competition against Intel you *need* to be looking for a market that is either a bad
> technical match for Intel's technologies, *or* is too small for them to get serious about
> it.
>
Competing against non-consumption, I think is the phrase that business school people would use. I.e. Introduce a product into some market, where users are currently totally under-served, or un-served. I'd award Richard a good point here, from the business intelligence point of view. Very interesting 'back and forth' discussion - where two contributors are able to offer two very different views on the engineering and technology. Not bad at all.
The question Aaron may have a view on, is whether or not these under-served, or un-served potential consumers do exist out there in the world of HPC? I.e. The kinds of people that we don't think about as HPC users at all, right now - that's essentially what competing against non-consumption means. It also means, that the technological solution doesn't have to be radically brilliant and all of the edges ironed out of it either. That provides one with space and time, to develop one's game - instead of trying to go straight in, head-to-head in the server space - with the 'incumbent' (again, another phrase that they use in business-ology).
I'd be interested to listen to Aaron's take on this question though, while the debate still has some 'heat' left in it. The reason I ask this is simple. I come across young university grad's nowadays, with bulging foreheads and ability to create simulation models, that model various climatic or weather conditions - and they're trying to run this stuff on three year old laptop hardware at the moment. They've never even heard of Xeon Phi, or Google analytics cloud service for that matter. I think there might be a significant well, of 'non-consumers' out there in HPC, and it isn't getting smaller, it's getting bigger.
