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SGI NUMAflex Linux System On Display @ SC2002
jarrod.smith writes "
According to SGI will unveil
its Intel® Itanium® 2
NUMAflex shared-memory supercomputer architecture (which runs Linux as its OS) at Supercomputing 2002 which runs this week in Baltimore, MD.
The link at SGI says the system will be on display at the show. The exhibit floor opens this evening. Unfortunately I did not go this year. Can those lucky enough to be at the meeting scope it out and post comments?"
Wow!
NumaFLEX... And to think... All that AMD could come up with was Athlon 64.
You'da thunk that they'd at least stuck a period or an 'e' on there somewhere...
eAthlon.64?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Additionally, it offers unparalleled scalability in the line of Linux supercomputing. This is a system built to grow with a business, although your business better be pretty much grown already to back the check you'd need to fill out to buy it.
My conclusion: it's an excellent largish solution for academia seeking a more stable environment than can be achieved with Beowulf clustering and excellent pricewise solution for businesses seeking to expand without sinking a lot of money into unnecessary costs.
Consider installing some propriatory OS instead.. where they cannot play around, change kernel design, drivers, VM or whatever they fancy. Would not that be a greater drawback ?
But IBM already have the source to AIX... they wrote it.
The "open source developers" of which you speak now count among their number professional developers from companies like IBM and SGI who have been working hand over foot for the last few years to bring Linux to large computing platforms. Check the development mailing lists.
It's not like Linus has been sitting in his bedroom coding for a decade and now suddenly SGI is going to download the kernel and throw it at supercomputing hardware. Big companies are and have been investing development dollars in Linux in order to make Linux ready for platforms like this one. And the great thing about Linux is that whatever SGI or IBM adds, the community tends to get back in the form of permanent enhancements to Linux.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Well, damn as nearly. Linux is only in catchup when the manufacturor will not release spec on how to use thier hardware.
When it comes to NUMA machines, Linux is up there. It may not excel at everything (yet - I'm sure that it will get there if it's not already). I'm mostly talking about the 2.5 kernel series.
From the status list
New scheduler for improved scalability (Ingo Molnar)
Support for Next Generation POSIX Threading (NGPT team)
Syscall interface for CPU task affinity (Robert Love)
Hotplug CPU support (Rusty Russell)
NUMA topology support (Matt Dobson)
Per-cpu hot & cold page lists (Andrew Morton, Martin Bligh)
NUMA aware scheduler extensions (Erich Focht, Michael Hohnbaum)
The biggest performance changes in 2.5 seem to be in the many thread and many CPU region, including NUMA.
I'd trust it. (Yes, I do do scientific supercomputing).
LINUX!? WHY LINUX!? Why not a stable OS...
Like Windows ME!
I've been hanging out at SC2002 all day, and I can tell you that nearly every booth on the show floor is showcasing Linux. Of course all the Linux cluster vendors have it, but so does sgi, Sun, IBM, Intel, AMD, HP, Compaq (separate booths - guess the merger isn't *really* done yet), and all the smaller vendors, to say nothing of all the research labs, etc.
Large linux systems and clusters are really all the rage right now in SC circles. I think the only booths I saw here not using Linux were the Apple booth (though they did have one gorgeous brand-new G4 running Xfree and twm, the sick bastards!) and the Japanese manufacturers NEC and Fujitsu (off in their own worlds, as always).
Linux isn't a big surprise to the SC set, though - this is a group that's used to UNIX. Hell, Microsoft doesn't even have a booth here, and they were at the last LinuxWorld conference.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
...okay so Linux is being applied to all these terrific projects of scale both large and small. Is it because it's an open system with seemingly hyperactive development or is it because it's simply better than anything else out there?
Linux is being used because there's no x86/Itanium port of Irix. SGI use Irix, which as of 6.5 is a superb Unix implementation, on their MIPS hardware. IBM use Linux because of all the software that's available for it, but Linux runs within a virtual machine on top of their proprietary zOS.
XFS has already made it into Linux, maybe some other Irix stuff like GRIO will be next.
I'm involved with a number of high energy physics experiments around the world (from a "physicist needs an obscene amount of computer power but a minimal budget, I try to give it to them" standpoint). Everyone is using Linux clusters at the moment. Why? Two reasons.
The first is price. None of these projects are rolling in money. Saving a few thousand dollars while setting up a hundred node cluster is a big win. The people working on the projects are technically skilled enough that a Unix varient is not significantly harder to use than a Windows variant, so there is no increase in TCO due to support.
The second is trust. They've been repeatedly burned by proprietary software. They run into a problem and the publisher isn't inclined to help (or wants more money than they have to fix it), and they're forced to fine another solution. Linux may not be perfect, but they're free to fix their own problems. They don't view it from a "Free Software is Ethical" view, but from a pragmatic "we've been repeatedly screwed and it isn't happening again" view.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
- No royalties. They can use it, hack it, sell it. Whatever they want, and never have to cut a check to anyone.
- The resources. The Linux development community is unlike any other. Using Linux means you have access to all sorts of development and product resources for absolutely free. The newsgroups are friendly, the documentation is deep. And if you're doing something weird, do it with Linux and chances are someone will help you.
- The name. If you need to impress the suits and get funding, Linux is a name you want to include. For a lot of people, Linux=cutting-edge technology. They don't understand it, but they know it's powerful, and they know it's gaining ground fast.
- The power. There's no two ways around it. Linux is a powerful and flexible system. You can push it, pull it, tune it and tweak it to do just about anything. Unlike some other OSes, the kernel was written to stand on its own, not necessarily part of any prefab package. There's no GUI code in the TCP/IP stack, and it's just as happy in a PDA as it is in a supercomputer.
Could you honestly immagine LLNL buying a Windows-based clustered supercomputer? Yeah. Me neither.
Using Linux helps companies keep from having to re-invent the wheel while at the same time keeping their options open and their money in their own pocket. It works so well it's a wonder more companies don't use it.For those afraid of the GPL, BSD presents a tempting alternative. But again, you lose a bit of the development resources and don't have the name to use to get your funding. For most people, though, GPL isn't a problem.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Three reasons:
Recall that SGI is a platform vendor. You buy a package of hardware and software from them. If their software costs are lower, that translates directly into higher margins. Apple made a similar "don't reinvent the wheel" decision in the choices that led to MacOS X, which left them time to focus on their true focus of applications and system usability.