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Linux Chosen for IBM's New Supercomputer

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the called-up-from-the-farm-leagues dept.

Uhh_Duh writes "news.com is reporting that Linux will be the main OS in the Blue Gene - IBM's $100m supercomputer project. The Blue Gene will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory." Wow. That's a lot of nuclear weapons simulations.

20 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. That's a lot of Tuxes... by blindcoder · · Score: 3, Funny

    to be displayed in the Framebuffer at startup...

    --
    See my blog for my free opinions.
    1. Re:That's a lot of Tuxes... by machine+of+god · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's why nothing will get done for the first month. The entire development team will be spending sleepless nights porting quake to work with 65000 processors.

  2. Re:What distribution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It'll be Redhat, 6 point something. They found a set of the CDs lying around so they decided to use that.

  3. Gzzzzap by Overand · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news, the oil companies rejoyce as they plan the new power plant that this number of processors will require.

  4. Why Linux? by Kj0n · · Score: 5, Funny

    It seems to be the ideal system to run the next Microsoft operating system.

    To quote someone else: "16 trillion bytes should be enough for everyone."

  5. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! by nmg196 · · Score: 4, Funny

    What's the official benchmark of this thing, on a well known scale like QFPS (Quake Frames Per Second)...? :)

  6. In other news... by vinlud · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... id Software finally found a proper testing environment for Doom 3!

    --
    Repeat after me: We are all individuals
  7. Deep Thought? by srhuston · · Score: 5, Funny
    I love this line in the story:
    The IBM research team is currently running a large Linux cluster to simulate Blue Gene.

    Building a computer, to tell you how to build another, larger, more complex computer. Hrmmm..
    --
    Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
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    1. Re:Deep Thought? by io333 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Building a computer, to tell you how to build another, larger, more complex computer. Hrmmm..

      Uh, that's how it works in general. Or did you think modern CPUs were laid out by hand?

      Naturally I laid out my own CPU by hand. I run Gentoo on it too. We all do. What are you, some kind of Mandrake wussy?

  8. Sounds impressive by Rubbersoul · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Blue Gene will contain 65,000 processors

    But what they don't tell you it that it is 65,000 old 386DXs ... :)

    --
    man .sig
    No manual entry for .sig.
    1. Re:Sounds impressive by forged · · Score: 3, Funny
      Wise of them to use PPC chips, which run rather cool.

      Picture 65,000 AMD's at 2+ GHz, what a fire hazard that would be :*)

  9. Re:Face it. by Iamthefallen · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean IBM, a large multinational company, isn't just out to do good? They actually use the best tools out there to make a profit without considering their moral obligation to stubbornly pick an OS and stick with it in religious conviction? Oh the horror! Won't someone please think of the children!

    -1, Sarcastic asshole, I know I know...

    --
    Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
  10. mice by magwm · · Score: 3, Funny

    wait until the mice (actually hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings) start building earth.. now that will be a computer.. including nuke tests and weather!

  11. Would you like to play a game? by gtooth · · Score: 3, Funny

    Global Thermonuclear XBill

  12. Unreal 2002 by thomas.galvin · · Score: 4, Funny

    And it still won't render more than 100 FPS on Unreal Tournament. Ah well...

    --
    Thomas Galvin
  13. Old times... by Julius+X · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Blue Gene will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory.

    That's a LOT of processors.

    It's nice to see that some companies have kept the tradition of computers that fill a room or five. Maybe they can throw some vacuum tubes on for old time's sake.

    --

    -Julius X
    remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
  14. Re:Open source IBM by pubjames · · Score: 3, Funny

    They want open-source to get them rich, right? Less initial cost by the company, etc etc. What are the odds they'll profit-share with people they're getting rich off of? (well, ok, attempting)

    Hey, you're giving free content to Slashdot by posting here! OSDN are getting rich off you, and they're not profit-sharing! You'd better stop posting to Slashdot!!

  15. Re:Not nukes by DJPenguin · · Score: 4, Funny

    Last I checked, Nuclear weapons did a pretty good job of folding MY proteins! ouch!

  16. Re:Open source IBM by gosand · · Score: 5, Funny
    They want open-source to get them rich, right? Less initial cost by the company, etc etc. What are the odds they'll profit-share with people they're getting rich off of? (well, ok, attempting)

    Dude, why are you bitching? I am sure they will make the source available so you can install it on your own 65,000 processor machine.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  17. Re:What distribution? by martinflack · · Score: 3, Funny

    To: Linus Torvalds
    From: bob@ibm.com
    Subject: kernel-smp patch, 65000 cpu's

    Dear Linus,
    Please accept this patch to accommodate thousands of processors in a single machine.
    [attached: patch]

    To: bob@ibm.com
    From: Linus Torvalds
    Subject: Re: kernel-smp patch, 65000 cpu's

    No problem, Bob. Just go ahead and send me one of those machines for "testing" and then I'll merge the patch in...

    Linus