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Terascale Computing System Installed

Posted by Hemos on from the more-power-then....something dept.

lysie writes The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, with Compaq and the NSF, has installed the Terascale Computing System. Worldwide, it's second in power only to ASCI White at Livermore. However, it's the most powerful system in the world for unclassified research--6 teraflops per second. 3,000 Compaq Alpha EV68 microprocessors, in 750 four-processor AlphaServer systems running Tru64 UNIX."

6 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Where's Linux? by warlock · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bah... why not Tru64, why Linux?

    Obviously you've never used Digital Unix, and you are not familiar with their kick ass, highly optimizing compilers... they ain't gonna build a cluster like that to run apache+mod_php and serve crap you know, it's all about number crunching.

  2. teraflops per second ? by Professeur+Shadoko · · Score: 4, Funny

    a flop is a floating point operation per second.
    a teraflop per second would be an acceleration in processing power... not what the article means I guess

  3. Scales like a real UNIX should by SumDeusExMachina · · Score: 4, Insightful
    3,000 Compaq Alpha EV68 microprocessors, in 750 four-processor AlphaServer systems running Tru64 UNIX.

    There will probably be a lot of people here asking "why isn't this running Linux?", without really knowing what they're talking about. First of all, Linux just doesn't have the kind of scalability that a commercial UNIX, particularly Tru64, does. Secondly, Tru64 is quite well-known for its excellent clustering capabilities, and its tight integration with the Alpha platform leads to high efficiency in computing. Finally, when you are paying $43 million for a supercomputer, you most certainly are going to be running the best software out there too, and frankly, the only reason that people out there are writing free software is that no one would want to pay for their code.

    When you pay for the cost of commercial UNIX systems, you are paying for the assurance that 1) you aren't going to have stupid design flaws like the one the 2.4 kernel has in its inability to use virtual memory efficiently and 2) All of your nice new custom hardware is going to be supported, and frankly, high performance drivers for high-end hardware under Linux are sorely lacking.

    --

    Is your company running tools written by ma
    1. Re:Scales like a real UNIX should by bconway · · Score: 4, Informative

      Alpha was the first non-x86 port of Linux, done by Linus himself after being given a DEC machine as a gift on a trip to the US (though I don't recall if it was on loan or not).

      --
      Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
  4. Supercomputers... by maan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm in a class at CMU with the head of the PSC...we've been having fun these past weeks, with him talking to us about this "machine". Seems their #1 objective right now is to submit the best possible score for the TOP 500. Apparently, the deadline was October 1st, but then they have some time after that to "rectify" their score...

    There was a fun story apparently about a slowdown that was due to _one_ RAM dimm not seated properly... So 2999 processors were doing their job, but then waiting for the last processor to finish its job, which was taking much longer...

    I've seen pictures of this beast. All I can say is: wow. So many cables, so many machines...

    And apparently, they're not yet completely connected. Each box is supposed to have two connections to a "fat tree" quadrics network. Well right now they only have one... But it seems that Linpack isn't so communication oriented, so it's not too big a strain on the network.

    Maan

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion