Comments on: NY sinks more money into HPC despite troubled past

By: John West

John West — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:44:03 +0000

Don – fair enough. Thanks for the added insight.

By: Don

Don — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:17:41 +0000

I am familiar with the project, and I can assure you that ARIS has nothing to do with HPC. The article you refer to does not reference any source with respect to the project’s HPC nature, and your quote was from the article, not from anyone connected with ARIS or the NYC DOE.

Brian Bonenfant accurately described ARIS’s nature. The HPC angle was picked up on by people who didn’t know what they were talking about, and repeated from there. Please don’t perpetuate the mistake.

By: John West

John West — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:56:43 +0000

Indeed, Brian, I am talking about ARIS. The ARIS system was covered, both by IBM and the state of NY, as an HPC investment. The original announcement (at http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=13172) included the following text:

“In order to measure how well public school students are learning, the New York City will spend $80 million on a supercomputer designed to analyze the performance of the city’s 1.1 million school kids. Mayor Bloomberg said the cost is worth it.”

And the rest of that story, including other parts of the announcement and subsequent reporting, continue to tap on the HPC drum.

By: Brian Bonenfant

Brian Bonenfant — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:26:25 +0000

I don’t think the $80Million investment in the “ARIS – Achievement Reporting and Innovation System” was an HPC investment. The system is a web based system for managing student records.

Perhaps you are confusing that with the equally substantial investment in NY Blue, a large IBM Bluegene system hosted at Brookhaven National Lab and funded mainly by the state of NY.

It would be a shame for people to get the impression that NY Blue was a disaster if in fact you are talking about the ARIS system.