Slashdot Mirror
Inside The World's Most Advanced Computer
Junky191 writes: "Just came across an informational page for the Earth Simulator computer, which provides nice graphics of the layout of the machine and its support structure, as well as details about exactly what types of problems it solves. Fascinating for the engineering problems tackled- how would you organize a 5,120 processor system capable of 40Tflops, and of course don't forget about the 10TB of shared memory." Take note -- donour writes: "well, the new list of supercomputer rankings is up today. I have to say that the Earth Simulator is quite impressive, from both a performance and architectural standpoint."
Didn't the mice in H2G2 already build such a computer? I think it was called... the Earth.
:)
Will the Earth Simulator have the nice fjords by Slartibartfast?
Could you imagine a beouwolf..... Ahh fuck it..
I am not going to ask "Does this run Linux ?" because it obviously does not, but can anyone point to some good resources on what kind of Operating Systems do these monster machines run ? Are they some kind of a UNIX ? Or are they some elite breed of OS that mortal humans have no chance of understanding ? Linkage appreciated.
how many FPS does this bitch get in Quake III?
They don't want to admit it, but the real reason for building this thing is so that they can predict appearances of Godzilla....
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Seems to me that though ES takes the overall performance crown, that the IBM and HP (man that sounds strange) units have some definite advantages over it. Primary of which is the fact that they DO use "off the shelf" parts. ASCI White uses 375Mhz Power3 chips which are comparitively low performance compared to what IBM is shipping now (1.3 Ghz Power4). I don't know what the technical details are behind ASCI White, but it seems that IBM could instantly get a doubling of performance by using new CPU modules. With the "specialized processor" approach that NEC uses, this would seem to be prohibitively expensive. IBM has already amortized most of the cost of the development of new processors through their normal business units.
Another advantage would be that since ASCI White is a hyper RS6K, you could use a lower end model (and IBM could rather inexpensively offer a lower end model) to develop your models on before using the relatively expensive big boy to do the actual simulations. I have to admit that this point is moot if they don't keep the utilization of the thing up pretty high most of the time.
Though they mention that ES "only needs 5104" processors vs 8192 for AW, it looks like ES still takes up massive amounts of space. Now ES' storage is significantly larger that AW, so maybe that's where all the space is being eaten, but it would be interesting to see what the actual cabinet space/power requirements for the two machines sans storage are (assuming they are both using standard stuff for storage).
Others things include since AW is based on OTS parts, is it easier to get parts for when processing units konk out. Is it simpler for a tech to work on the unit. Since Linux is already running on RS6K, theoretically with a few device drivers, you could run Linux on that bad boy
Of course all this is moot in the non-real-world of supercomputers. With seemingly infinite budgets, the only _real_ measure is absolute performance, and ES obviously has the edge here. But if I were the IBM sales rep for supercomputing, I'd sure be hyping the fact that when it's not simulating nuclear explosions, you can run Gimp and Mozilla.
..a single-cpu one of these!!!
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
The easiest way to validate these types of prediction mechanisms is to feed them only part of your data set and see how well it predicts your remaining dataset. For example, if you have an ocean temperature data set from 1920 to the present, you might start by feeding it 1920-1992 and seeing how well its predictions for then past ten years hold up to you actual data. You may think that the known data set it too small for accurate predictions, but there are some fascinating methods (like ice core sampling and tree growth sampling) that seem to allow pretty good deductions as to past climate conditions over a very long period of time.
The Earth Simulator is running Super UX. The same operating system as the rest of the NEC supercomputers
The German Language TV channel 3sat will broadcast a 30 min film on Earth Simulator on Monday and 24th of June at 21:30 hours and on Tuesday, 25th of June at 14:30 hours.
There are some nice pictures on the ES site as well. I wonder if the colouration of the cabinets is there to prevent the engineers from getting lost..? :o)
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Better rethink that theory:
Earth Simulator: 35.86TFlops.sec (according to Top100 list)
Seti@Home network: 37.07TFlops/sec (over last 24hr., according to the site).
Just because it is an incredibly powerful machine doesn't mean it has the distributed computing projects beat.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.