CERN 29-Apr-99 Computer architectures and operating systems Is there an opportunity for convergence? FOCUS meeting CERN - 29 April 1999 Les Robertson CERN/IT

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #2les robertson - cern/it Summary  A claim that PCs with Linux and Windows are enough for all of HEP’s needs  An assorted collection of caveats  A proposal for a convergence policy

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #3les robertson - cern/it Claim: For the foreseeable future (5 years)  PC hardware  cheapest, best price/performance, as fast as is needed  reliable, real commodity  Windows  a 150M unit market  masses of productivity tools, applications  Linux  by far the biggest ever Unix  the standard for Intel architecture  preferred physics environment  legacy applications & experience  Hard times for the RISC vendors

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #4les robertson - cern/it Conclusion  PCs with Linux and Windows are just fine  price  reliability  usability & functionality  support  There is no need to support anything else

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #5les robertson - cern/it March 97 - first PCs for physics batch April PCs (400 processors)

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #6les robertson - cern/it What would we lose? (the other side of the coin) RISC hardware and software provide -  Solid, reliable hardware, designed to maximise performance  Industrial strength operating systems  clear functionality spec  performance-tuned  multi-processor tested  deterministic support, with clear escalation process  Certified hardware + software combinations  Focus on system (as opposed to component) design  and willingness to discuss product strategy, requirements, joint developments, etc. with HEP labs (or is that just a marketing ploy?)  The possibility to ensure program portability necessity

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #7les robertson - cern/it Are Java stations an option?  SUN, Oracle, etc. propose light-weight Java stations  Really low cost, with zero administration.. but everything has to be written in Java  Good for naturally server-centric applications (e.g. database applications, Web)  Not so obvious for applications that do not have a natural client-server model, and/or use multiple languages (like most HEP applications)  low cost Java stations will keep up the pressure on Wintel  but otherwise, for HEP applications and HEP users …… NO like games machines

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #8les robertson - cern/it Is Linux ready for HEP?  Linux and the rest of Free Software offer:  high quality design  excellent functionality  the products of massive intellectual investment  a sustainable environment  The functionality as a desktop system, or simple server are fine ……… but many proprietary Unix systems have much better server functionality ……… however, the evolving farm models place limited requirements on data servers  Linux tape and disk server evaluations at CERN look promising

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #9les robertson - cern/it Is Linux ready for HEP?  Support is still a problem  especially for load-related, configuration-related issues on servers But there is a rapidly growing number of commercial offerings (including IBM+Red Hat, HP+Red Hat) and HEP could probably justify a kernel programmer or two (since there is no licence fee for the OS)  Lacking third party products  or well-supported ports of third party products (and in particular Objectivity)  changing fast - but this is clearly still a concern

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #10les robertson - cern/it Is Linux ready for HEP? Not quite for all applications, but the situation is changing very fast

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #11les robertson - cern/it Are we sure that Linux is the right choice for Unix on Intel?  No - we cannot be sure there will be competition from the suppliers of proprietary Unix (Compaq, IBM, HP) Linux is the clear and growing leader today - it will be hard to beat

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #12les robertson - cern/it Do we also need Windows?  The majority might say No  Windows is hard to use for physics batch, especially when we try to make it look like Unix  It probably is not much better (maybe even worse) as a server than Linux  Support for complex environments is no clearer than with Linux  But there are so many excellent “productivity” tools and applications sustained by the 150 million unit Windows market  How can people get by without Developer’s Studio?  How can Star Office keep up with MS Office?  ……….  How can we ignore the biggest ever operating system?

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #13les robertson - cern/it An opportunity for standardisation in HEP  At CERN (& in general HEP) we are running far too many operating systems, in many cases with only slightly different functionality or hardware cost benefits - - and at a high cost for users and support teams  PCs + { Linux ¦ Windows } offer an historic opportunity to reduce the solution set  The requirements of LHC computing -  massive numbers of processors/boxes  integration of regional computing centres and CERN demand a common agreement on what will be supported requirement

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #14les robertson - cern/it Proposal for a policy  Restrict ourselves to PC hardware (IA32 -> ? IA64)  with Linux or Windows 2000  Beef-up investment in Linux and Windows  bring support up to the standards of proprietary Unixes  tackle the problems of scaling the management and performance of desktops and physics farms  Develop a migration plan -  progressively freeze support for other Unixes, announcing end-dates which are reasonable for old experiments,  but discourage strongly further investments in RISC systems by current and future experiments  Try to have the same policy adopted in the HEP community

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #15les robertson - cern/it Just to be clear ----  This is a proposal for a convergence policy  which looks realistic now  and will provide a single starting point for LHC computing  but we can be sure that the business will not stand still, and we shall sooner or later have to expand the systems and architectures supported AIX WNT Irix Solaris Digital Unix HP-UX MAC-OS Linux Windows 95 SPARC MIPS Intel IA-32 PA-RISC Power PC Alpha Linux Windows 2000 Intel IA-32/ ?

CERN 25-Mar-99 - #16les robertson - cern/it Conclusion  PCs, Linux and Windows 2000 enable a major simplification of the environments supported at CERN, where our needs mostly coincide with those of many other users  We can and should take the decision now to standardise on these  following and stimulating the mass market in most cases  restricting HEP specials to really, really special issues  building up very good support & expertise  progressively freezing support for other systems, architectures