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Coolest Cluster Ever
sw155kn1f3 writes "Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory built a cheap (less than $1k per unit) 294-unit Beowulf claster dedicated to run astrophysics calculations. According to their website it's 85th fastest computer in the world. Seems cool and promising as it made with cheap components and off the shelf hardware."
Imagine a single unit of these...
They didn't even use a rack mount solution, they used regular Shuttle XPC SS51G Mini-PCs
;)
I thought Shuttles Mini-PCs were cool before but this really resets the scale... Now where is the HOWTO for this thing?
.: Max Romantschuk
I don't really think you can really quantify coolness in general, but I fail to see how the fact that this thing is cheap makes it all that cool.
Perhaps if it was going to run simulations of ultra-low temperature physics... get it? haha. I kill me.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
and a "heat pipe" instead of a fan!
Actually, the heat pipe doesn't replace the fan, it just lowers the number of fans used in the system, since the case and processor fan can be combined.
Tom's Hardware has a review of one of these things (not the same model though)... have a look.
.: Max Romantschuk
2. ???
3. SLASHDOT!
Laugh, it's a joke.
They could spend their $3k on something actually needed by 100 people thinking about spending $3k to share a spot on a fastest computers list.
Like a prosititute.
You go to your high school reunion, what's, more impressive, the "Hugh Hefner" 100 $3k prostitutes that come with you, or the "Bill Gates" story about the 300 1k computers in your mom's basement?
paintball
I really like the picture on the sites frontpage.
:)
:)
:)
.au dollars for all our procs (and maybe switch - I don't know the details) - half the performance, half the cost.
i can imagine the small size of the Shuttles being an advantage, not to mention the "coolness" factor looking at it. (i assume the "cool" in the intro refers to emotion and not teperature!!)
But getting computation done cheap is no longer the challenge. It's getting the data from one node to the other. They still need "custom" expensive equipment for this.
I see they use 3com gigabit ethernet. having this 300+ gigabit switch capability is not "cheap".
Until one can buy this kind of networking equipment for really cheap, we shouldn't mention things like "of the shelve Beowulf super computer in the top 100".
Up until 3 hours ago, we said we were the only machine in the top500 dedicated solely to astrophysics. Now we are one of 2
But we use 180 processors, @ 2.15 GHz, and get about 0.90 Gflops/processor, whereas they get about 0.88 gflops/proc, getting us in the top 180th.
The difference being they have faster memory, and we have a big badass switch. They have two switches, with something like only 10 gigabit between the switches! We have 250gbit within our one switch. a third of our nodes have 2 gigs RAM, and we also have room for upgrade to more nodes on our switch, and they don't. So, in the words of Nelson "Hee haw!"
When they say $1000 per proc, they are not factoriing in their two switches. This will bring the price up to about $500,000, unless someone is donating a switch or 2
We have about the same cost ratio - something like 250,000