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Linux Chosen for IBM's New Supercomputer
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.
It'll be Redhat, 6 point something. They found a set of the CDs lying around so they decided to use that.
Hopefully the fruits of this will feed through into the mainline kernel and so to other systems.
In other news, the oil companies rejoyce as they plan the new power plant that this number of processors will require.
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."
That's a lot of nuclear weapons simulations.
RTFA. That's a lot of protein fold simulations.
What's the official benchmark of this thing, on a well known scale like QFPS (Quake Frames Per Second)...? :)
... id Software finally found a proper testing environment for Doom 3!
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Building a computer, to tell you how to build another, larger, more complex computer. Hrmmm..
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
There's A nice presentation[ibm.com] that describes the system quite well.
Second, the AIX roadmap goes out to at least 2007 (five year planning window). So don't be throwing away your SMIT knowledge quite yet. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't significant AIX work being done as far out as 2010.
IBM has at least us$20B in AIX and as a result it is very mature. They're putting nearly us$1B a year into Linux (JFS being just one wonderful thing ported). It will still be a while before they can bet the company on Linux. Do also keep in mind that AIX has at least a 15 year head start on Linux.
-- Multics
The Blue Gene will contain 65,000 processors
... :)
But what they don't tell you it that it is 65,000 old 386DXs
man
No manual entry for
Anyone else notice this?
The decision to adopt Linux came, in part, as a result of the growing size and strength of the open-source community. Thousands of developers around the world are participating in the evolution of Linux. Creating a new OS inside of IBM would require a massive engineering effort.
followed by
We chose Linux because it's open and....saw considerable advantage in using an operating system supported by the open-source community, so that we can get their input and feedback."
So, basically, IBM doesn't want to design their own proprietary system (smart) and plans to use the resources currently available. (also smart)
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)
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
They contribute plenty..one I use and thank them for is JFS, the journalling filesystem used by AIX. I have a question...I love Linux..use it everyday, but I ALSO love AIX..which I think is the superior commercial UNIX..what's wrong with using AIX?
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
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...
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In 5 years, there will be only Linux, BSD and Solaris - with BSD and Solaris being binary and source compatible to Linux.
Linux has reunited Unix, this is a good thing because it didn't happen by monopilzation from one company. There is lot of diversity within Linux (lots of different vendors and supporters) but it's all compatible.
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.
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?
And it still won't render more than 100 FPS on Unreal Tournament. Ah well...
Thomas Galvin
Porting or developing their own projects -- JFS is an often pointed to as an example
Sponsoring developers of Open Source projects -- I know at least one KDE developer that was paid to write a series of tutorials on KParts that were published on IBM's web site . I recently saw something by the founder of Gentoo Linux as well.
Public Relations -- This is the big one. IBM lends Open Source and Linux more credability than any other company. They throw more resources into promoting Linu x than any other company. At a time where most major tech companies are at the most passively supporting Linux, IBM is very actively promoting it, and it's the reason that a lot of other major players are paying attention to Linux
Again, you can't underestimate the effects that having IBM backing Linux has in a corporate environment. Intel and AMD are paying attention because of IBM, and I'd be that a lot of a big part of why MS has taken note of Linux lately is that competing with Linux means competing with IBM.
So yes, they're contributing back, but the most significant ways are not the conventional methods. They're in fact contributing something to Linux that no number of hackers can -- credibility.
Linux is free. Linux will remain free. Forever.
And "free" as in "freedom" is important. It guarantees a save investment and makes sure you are not trapped in vendor lock-in. It also guarantees the abcense of stuff like WPA or MSFT's new EULA.
Stuff like that is more important than what "sucks" and what has "media appeal". IBM has learned this first-hand with OS/2.
No, OS/2 did not fail because of crappy marketing. It failed because computer-makers refused to preinstall a OS from a competitor. No matter how cheap it might have been, no matter how great it was. - It would have been a stupid decision for computer makers to chain themselves to a competitor.
While some people still don't get it, EVERY major IT-company already understood that Linux is the only way to go long-term. Every major IT-company which is not trapped in Microsoft-contracts is supporting, using and/or offering Linux solutions. IBM, Intel, AMD, Sun, Oracle.. you name it.
What????
IBM have spent a fortune on raising the public profile of linux. Now, perhaps you're a software geek, but those positive articles about linux in the mainstream press don't come cheap. And those IBM Consultants selling linux to conservative financial data centres need a LOT of backing.
IBM are fighting a propaganda war with Microsoft. That eats millions very fast.
I still hope they get decent coolers 'cuz we're now talking about 32 processors per chip ! Still, what an awesome design to increase the density & number of processors. I was wondering how they'd do it for 65,000. Now I know :)
Interesting question unfolding : will we ever get those chips on the desktop ? Imagine your own 32-way PC at home. Heh, who needs Beowulf clusters now !
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
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Programmers on this level face entirely different challenges, such as optimizing a 65 thousand thread program so that CPUs aren't idle 90% of the time waiting for others. This is going to output some high quality specialized kernel code that about 10 or 20 computers around the world would find helpful performance-wise. Any desktop or server for mere mortals won't see much improvement.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
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.
YEAH! :P Heh heh. I admin AIX and it is the best UNIX I have ever worked with. You can do everything from the command line, thru smit, or for the really bad off WSM. SMIT, while it's a CURSES based (Does IBM use NCURSES??) admin tool, you can do almost everything from it. Because you usually buy hardware from IBM, everything just works, or you have diagnostic info to tell you it isn't working including LED codes that tell you why you won't boot (Corrupted BLV, JFS Volume, Bad superblocks....it's all there). In any case, AIX is here to stay and just because IBM chooses to use Linux on their super computer means nothing. It may mean that the government wanted Linux because with THAT many nodes, your AIX support bill would be outrageous! :) That and it maybe the Beowulf stuff just works better then the AIX SP stuff. I wonder if this is using the new Power4 blade servers?
Gorkman