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Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest

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  • Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest

    Phoronix: Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest

    Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution CBL-Mariner has been public now for about two years. CBL-Mariner has been in use for Microsoft's use-cases from their Azure cloud to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) while their newest release continues a recent trend of pointing towards a high performance computing (HPC) workloads focus too...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Arch linux packages PyTorch, but it seems like most people use a virtual environment (venv, conda or docker) instead of the system package. I felt like the only person in the entire SD community using it... and I too eventually dropped it for PyTorch 2.0 nightly (installed via pypi) anyway.

    Also, distros have to be careful about avoiding conflicts with pip/pypi. And very few (Arch being one of them) consolidate every package down to a single Python version.
    Last edited by brucethemoose; 24 February 2023, 10:30 AM.

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    • #3
      In the HPC world you usually use either modules (EasyBuild/Spack) or some virtual environment for your high performance software.

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      • #4
        Makes sense. Microsoft is trying to push everyone by hook or crook into Azure services where they can nickle and dime you every month instead of laying out periodic licensing which isn't as lucrative. However, almost no one uses Windows for HPC and that's where LLM learning systems live. If they're going to push into the AI hype, they need a version of Linux they control on offer. This is similar to how IBM operates. While they prefer you to use their vertical stack, they'll generally support whatever stack you want to use so long as you have the money to pay the service contracts. Similarly, Microsoft wants you to use Azure, but they aren't entirely picky if you use Linux on the server and Windows clients, or Linux servers with a mix of client types (Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, etc.)

        However, I think some of this emphasis is because Microsoft is hoping that $10 billion they paid OpenAI will result in ChatGPT learning models and Bing customization mostly running on Azure. Bing's Sydney is a turd once you ignore the hysterical hype, but it's one they're willing to hold their nose and run with because Bing has no other claim to fame. They're chasing after yet another rainbow's tail.
        Last edited by stormcrow; 24 February 2023, 01:31 PM. Reason: grammar

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        • #5
          Guess a long-term goal for Microsoft could be to have "enterprise" features in their linux distribution.
          Like AzureAD controlled acccounts, centrally managed "security rules" and logging.. Think: your typical "Endpoint Management" solution..
          Rules for which packages you can install from which sources and such..
          One setting in azure could be to limit the type of operating systems you could install in the VMs / limit acccess to other resources in the Azure Account / Company based on "compliance" state of a workload / vm..

          After they implemented this, they will sell it to big cooperations as a "security feature" to lock them into their offering / ecosystem..

          So they essentially lock in the users into their system and can increase the prices at will.

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