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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.

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What distribution? by stevelinton · · Score: 5, Informative
    I think we can safely assume it will be their own very special system. The article says:

    Tailoring Linux to run on these upcoming machines will require substantial research, according to IBM. The company has, for instance, created a technique where only select processors can access the full hardware resources of the machines. IBM is also looking at ways to reduce interference between different tasks.


    Hopefully the fruits of this will feed through into the mainline kernel and so to other systems.
  2. Lots more info by stevelinton · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's A nice presentation[ibm.com] that describes the system quite well.

  3. Re:Open source IBM by larien · · Score: 5, Informative

    While they probably won't profit share, they'll likely share in other ways, by code improvements etc. IBM is investing heavily in linux and I'd assume they're looking at ways to improve linux to make it as stable as AIX is. They've already done work on integrating JFS into the kernel, for instance.

  4. Variations on the same story by randomErr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yahoo! News Version
    IBM Chooses Linux for 'Blue Gene' Supercomputer

    IBM has chosen the open source Linux operating system to run on one of its largest, most powerful supercomputing projects, dubbed "Blue Gene."

    The petaflop computer, which can calculate 1 quadrillion operations per second, is 100 times more powerful than the fastest computers available, according to IBM.

    ZDNet UK
    Linux will power IBM supercomputer project
    The upcoming family of 'Blue Gene' supercomputers will run on an extended form of Linux, a major endorsement for the open source operating system

    Linux will be the main operating system for IBM's upcoming family of "Blue Gene" supercomputers -- a major endorsement for the operating system and the open-source computing model it represents.

    OS Opinion
    IBM Chooses Linux for 'Blue Gene' Supercomputer
    Another supercomputer in the same family, Blue Gene/L, is also set to run Linux. IBM has said Blue Gene/L will be at least 15 times faster than today's fastest supercomputers.
    See Complete Story

    The Blue Gene project, first announced in late 1999, was designed to model the folding of human proteins, allowing researchers to better understand diseases and their cures. At the time, IBM said Blue Gene would be 1,000 times more powerful than "Deep Blue," the computer that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
  5. supercomputer crippled by small memory by peter303 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Conventional wisdom, sometimes called Amdahl's second law of computing, says you need as many bytes as flops, i.e. a one second main memory buffer. This computer only has 1/60 sufficient memory- 16 terabytes for one petaflop. Anything that involves serious dataprocessing, e.g. sensor signals, won't run at top speed due to the seriousmemory deficiency.