We should not be distracted into arguments about bandwidth that ignore the latency, and forget the convenience of access on-demand that dominates human behaviours, rather than the apparent efficiency and low cost per bit of queued batched delivery. I was reminded of the difference between bandwidth and timely access to data by this story on koala genome research which is moving its data management into the cloud. "The handing of the data is something we were really struggling with. We were taxiing hard drives around Sydney. The koala genome project is an international project and with collaborators from all the over the world and we were posting data to them.' "The problems facing the koala genome project are not unusual for research programs." in The Australian 26/4/16 Researchers discover benefits of freedom to fail in the cloud (paywalled) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/researchers-discover-benefits-of-freedom-to-fail-in-the-cloud/news-story/4fc3929493d5c4be0da048a37e2d0f51
(The end of the article attributes the value of cloud computing for research with the ability to lease space and experiment. I would give more value to the ability to share data widely around a distributed team with very fast update, and for researchers to do experimental analyses of ideas before the heat of striking inspiration particles dissipate) ----- "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truckload of tapes trundling down the highway." -- Chris Johnson, Hon AsPro Computer Science ANU _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
