[TEST/REVIEW] CPU accounting patches

[Kevin Oberman]

> On Thursday 26 January 2006 06:06, Ian FREISLICH wrote:
> 
> >
> > I wonder how many people still bill for CPU time?  I'd go for the
> > faster context switches.
> >
> 
> Almost all major ITO's providers - From SUN, HP, IBM, EDS etc. has offerings 
> that in some shape or other uses a "Utility model" based upon some sort of 
> financial model based upon actual CPU/IO etc. usage - It is a major area now 
> and provides one of the corner stones in the movement towards "Public Utility 
> models"
> 
> So it is very relevant as an area for general improvement and the "historical" 
> models are not really good enough, for further information take a look a 
> products as MicroMeasure etc.

Good accounting is very important to some, but the issue of dealing with 
reduced clock speed is almost certainly of no issue when it comes to charging 
for computer use. I can't imagine any reason someone would be paying for CPU 
time on a processor not running "full out".

The only time that this might be an issue is when thermal management takes 
over. I'd hope that thermal management would never kick in on a commercial 
compute server, but, if it did, the customer should, at least, only pay for 
the number of seconds the job would have run had it been properly cooled. 
(Actually, he should probably pay less as his time is also being wasted.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634