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Road map for Wolfram Cloud Producer

Posted 10 years ago

I really like the Wolfram Cloud concept and I think I can now find a viable additional business model for my company were "Mathematica" could play an essential role.

However, for this to work, I need the Producer configuration. I signed up for it almost immediately when it was released.

Right now, given the beta status, there is little difference between the producer and the developer version. There are more storage capacity and additional credits but the key differentiators are not in place and the support/development teams at Wolfram seem to be reluctant to share any details.

So my question is: When (approximately) will the following features be available for the Producer:

  1. Local files. Not even in Sweden with a 99% coverage of 4G and fiber does it feel comfortable to not being able to save your work unless you are online. The online editor does not work on Windows 8.1 (tried all combinations of browsers) :-( so right now it isn't an option.

  2. Scheduled tasks. The example from the documentation does not work.

  3. Documentation showing limitation of available functions vs Mathematica 10, e.g. today I learned that ParallelMap and GPU computing (compare with the text on Wolfram Desktop is not supported. However, this is not found anywhere in documentation and Wolfram support also seems surprised by it.

POSTED BY: Fredrik Doberl
4 Replies

We have deployed an update that has fixed scheduled tasks. Sorry for the inconvenience.

POSTED BY: Andrew de Laix
Posted 10 years ago

I work closely with the cloud development team, so I'll try to answer your questions. With regards to local files, we are actively developing the full version of Wolfram Desktop to support this. We don't have an official release date for that yet but it should be coming soon. I tried the first example in the ScheduledTask documentation and did notice a problem. Regrettably this is a bug that creeped into a recent release which I have brought it to the attention of our developers. We will try to get it fixed as soon as we can. Finally, we do try to indicate in the documentation when a function does not work in the cloud. In the case of ParallelMap you will notice in the online documentation for that function there is text indicating this isn't a cloud enabled feature. That is slightly inaccurate because ParallelMap will evaluate in the cloud, but you will be limited to 1 kernel session making it functionally equivalent to Map. Still, it isn't the parallel computing option you want.

We are aware that many users would like to do true parallel computations in the cloud. We're developing our High Performance Computing product to support just that. Unfortunately I have to say 'coming soon' again, but I will note that this is been a highly requested feature, so we really are keeping it on the front burner.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback; we definitely want to know what is important to our users.

POSTED BY: Updating Name

I think I begin to understand why I (and maybe others) are misunderstanding Wolfram Cloud Desktop. Many at Wolfram (sales, support, answers in this forum) see it as a tool for building cloud apps only. This explains the current limitation on ParallelMap and CUDA.

However, the way the Wolfram site describes Wolfram Desktop, I perceive it as a superset of Mathematica 10. That is, all existing and new functions and additional cloud functions and other properties (monhly payments, development seats, etc.).

Perhaps the differentiation between the variants of the Wolfram Cloud offerings need to be reworked. I think that there are other properties that makes sense than moving the Cloud Desktop towards MMA 10 (mail if you are interested in my ideas).

Again, Wolfram Cloud is a great step forward for how to make Wolfram Language usable.

Local files, ok. Sounds good!

Scheduled tasks, ok. Great that the bug could be reproduced & that it will be fixed.

ParalellMap. I agree that it would be great to have cloud variant of those functions. As a buisiness model, Wolfram (or I as a "reseller") could then add value by selling faster results. (Regarding the documentation, I couldn't find the limitation you mentioned in the on-line documentation).

POSTED BY: Fredrik Doberl

Local files are fixed in 10.0.1

POSTED BY: Fredrik Doberl
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