Slashdot Mirror
Sun Releases Starcat
SilentChris writes: "Sun has released the Starcat server, a beast with up to 106 processors running Unix. Anyone have an extra couple [million] bucks lying around?" They're not cheap.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Lets remember, that this system is not intended to replace a beowolf cluster of cheap pc's. It is intended to do something that most beowolf clusters can never do: present a single OS image with half a terabyte of memory that any cpu can access at very high speed.
This is a system that is very good at things like fluid dynamics and massive database operations. It is not a good idea if all you want to do is get to the top of the list for the SETI@Home project
The system grows to 106 in the following way:
There are 18 "cpu/memory" boards that hold 4 cpu's each. This brings the system up to a total of 72 cpu's and 576GB of ram.
Now, if you want an server that just does number crunching and dont care about I/O, you can then add 'MaxCPU" modules. Each module holds two additional cpu's (no memory) and occupies the hPCI module slot (a hot swap PCI case that can hold what looks like two to four pci cards). You can use up to 17 of the hPCI module slots to hold MaxCPU modules. (there are 18 pci channels on the system, and at least one must be used for accessing the boot disk).
So there ya have it, 106 cpu's and half a terabyte of ram. I think that in most cases, folks will opt to not use the MaxCPU modules and just stick to the 72 cpu limit.
According to the specs each processor board holds 4 processors and 32 gigs of memory.
Now, if the starcat treats domains (partitions) the same as the E10k (I haven't been to training yet on it), then each domain at minimum will consist of 4 processors and 32 gigs of ram, ie 1 processor board. Basicaly these doamins are treated as seperate boxes as far as Solaris is concerned. You configure a domain to say contain 2 system boards, and then when you load Solaris, it then sees 8 processors and 64 gigs of memory. This way you can allocate resources as the need fits. But this means it doesn't look like the virtual processor that mainframes present.
The starcat may deal with processors above 72 in a different way, but I honestly don't know at this time how it deals with them.
Hope this helps answer your question.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
The SGI origin has a ccNUMA architecture, which makes it great for some tasks, ok for others, and awful for yet others. (the trick is to make sure that your particular app falls under the 'great' category)
The sun system is an smp based system, everything connects to a common backplane and each board has equal access to all of the other boards. With the sgi, the speed of accessing memory on the local board or boards in the same cabinet is much faster than hits to memory in remote cabinets.
From what I can tell, Sun is planing on producing a special system board that goes into one of those 18 slots. Thus, with 19 StarCats you can create one big system with 1836 cpu's and 9.7TB of ram. (think of a system in the middle that acts as the center of a star) it will most likely be based on a COMA architecture rather than a ccNUMA. Like the SGI, memory access will depend on the distance between the requesting cpu and the storage location. The difference is that under COMA, if a cpu requests a particular bit of memory a lot, that page is either migrated or copied to a memory bank on that cpu's memory board (so if 5 cpu's all need read only access to the same bit of memory, then they can each have their own copy in a local memory bank. write updates are what make the system a pain in the ass to manage ).