This post made me laugh: l00k1ng for phr33 VPS plezze!

[D. Strout]

Google could

No, they couldn't - no one could. It has to do with what that machine would be able to process vs. what you could pipe in to/out of it. You'd need some serious (read: nonexistent) network throughput to actually get everything out of it as it is processed. Either that or you'd have to have it sitting idle at times to keep up with it, at which point you'd be losing money. That's why Google uses a bunch of small machines rather than one big one.

 

[Shados]

No, they couldn't - no one could. It has to do with what that machine would be able to process vs. what you could pipe in to/out of it. You'd need some serious (read: nonexistent) network throughput to actually get everything out of it as it is processed. Either that or you'd have to have it sitting idle at times to keep up with it, at which point you'd be losing money. That's why Google uses a bunch of small machines rather than one big one.

Not all algorithms are equal - they don't all have the same response to changes in input size. It wouldn't be that hard to find a purpose which has relatively small inputs/outputs but requires a ridiculous amount of processing time.

 

[maounique]

Not all algorithms are equal - they don't all have the same response to changes in input size. It wouldn't be that hard to find a purpose which has relatively small inputs/outputs but requires a ridiculous amount of processing time.

There are tons of such tasks. Google is a network company, not a scientific simulation one, therefore they adjust to their regular workload.

 

[kaniini]

There are tons of such tasks. Google is a network company, not a scientific simulation one, therefore they adjust to their regular workload.

Yeah but such a machine would be useful for some things Google does like complex map-reduce statistics calculations.

It just so happens that they don't need big machines because map-reduce is easily distributed, but they could certainly use it.

 

[Magiobiwan]

I could use it. For winning any e-peen contest EVER CREATED.