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SGI Installs First Itanium Cluster At OSC

Troy Baer writes: "SGI and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) have announced the installation of the first cluster using Itanium processors. The system consists of 73 SGI 750 nodes, each with two Itanium 733MHz procs and 4GB of memory, connected by Myrinet 2000 and Ethernet. Software includes Linux/ia64, SGI's ia64 compiler suite, MPICH/ch_gm, OpenPBS, and Maui Scheduler."

6 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. 5.86 Gflops per processor by Perdo · · Score: 5, Informative
    5.86 Gflops per processor (We can assume marketing fud value) at $3,300 Compared to the Athlon 1.4 with a peak of 1.37 Gflops (benched value) for $145. Keep in mind the nifty PCI card that has 4 G4 processors on it. That would make for 92 processors at 1Gflop each in just one box.

    Unfortunately, this seems to mark Intel's latest attempt to push an overpriced, substandard product at us. The P4 was crippled from the begining and is only just now begining to show any promise. The PIII at 1.13 and 1.2 Ghz is finally available 8 months after the recall of their failed 1.13 processor. Even their purchase of Alpha from compaq seems to be just stock propping because the original creators of the alpha are now working for AMD. The reason Compaq was willing to sell in the first place is the second generation alpha has been subjected to over three years of delays because they simply did not have the engineering talent to improve a ten year old design.

    The talented engineeers are working for AMD, built the athlon and are working on the sledgehammer.

    Before anyone jumps to Intel's defence, like they need defending as long as they are the 800 pound gorilla, keep this in mind:

    Craig Barret warned "This was a year of record annual revenue and earnings; yet, slowing economic conditions impacted fourth quarter growth and are causing near-termuncertainty,". He was faced with AMD going from 10% market share to 34% market share in a year. Wall street took barret's word as gospel that the entire market was in decline and not just Intel's market share. Intel is a market bellwether so we all got laid off. Just so Intel would not have to admit that AMD had a better product. Nasty business. Intel does not have a great product and they are reckless with their power.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  2. Re:Wrong logo, Wrong idea by BitwizeGHC · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hey, never give up hope! Remember how Borland changed their name to the laughable "Inprise" some time ago? They're back as Borland now. Companies want to please their customers, and if enough want some part of the old SGI back they'll get it.

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    N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
  3. in related news by Matthew+Luckie · · Score: 3, Informative

    there is a much larger cluster of linux machines going to be created care of the NSF. press release here. good day for linux!

  4. Re:Interesting by Guppy06 · · Score: 3, Informative
    "One only wonders if this would be posted on Slashdot if the OS was Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter."

    It wouldn't be worth mentioning, since you can't cluster more than four nodes with W2k Datacenter. When you compare that to this cluster of 70+...

  5. it's worse than that... by green+pizza · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're thinking of "Rocket" Rick Belluzzo, former CEO of SGI. He was responsible for putting MIPS/IRIX on hold, courting the Wintel crowd, and the "sgi" logo. He successfully put SGI in a steep nosedive they'll probably never recover from.

    Where is Mr. Belluzzo today?

    Hold on to your hat...

    http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/belluzzo/d efault.asp

  6. Re:OT: Music Box for IRIX? by irix · · Score: 3, Informative
    The Indigo's and Indigo 2 Impact-series were purplish.

    Well, not exactly. The Indy is a blue pizza box. The Indigo2 was a much larger turquoise/grren box, and the Indigo2 Impact (which had tons of problems, BTW) was the same box in purple.

    I should know - I have an Indy and an Indigo2 ;)

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    Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.