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SGI launches R16000
nkrgovic writes " SGI has just launched a new CPU - the long expected R16000. The new CPU works on 700MHz, has 4MB secondary cache and more goodies.
For now the new CPU is only used in SGI's Fuel workstations, but we should expect to see it pretty soon in SGI's Origin servers as well. With new high density compute nodes this should make the Origin's the fastest supercomputing server per square foot."
I'll be running my P4 at 3 Gigahertz, thankyouverymuch.
;)
True, but your architecture still sux
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I guess that makes it faster than my car. :)
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I worked all summer in an all-SGI shop.. And I call tell you how far behind they are. The place where I work is specialized in HPC, so when they started in 1992, SGI was probably a pretty good choice, but now for workstation, I wouldnt say its overkill, I would actually say that its underkill. We made a benchmark comparing an SGI Origin and a linux Ahtlon cluster, the athlon needed only two nodes to beat the origin and with all 16 nodes where about 10 times faster... SGIs are just overpriced, for 99.999% (that's 5 nines) PCs can do the job and even do it better and especially do it much cheaper. So their workstation market is being destroyed from under them.
On the other end, their HPC (super-computers) is being attacked from above. On that sector, price is not really a problem, its just pure performance. And there too they are being beaten, SGI just does not have the research power that
NEC or IBM can have. So they are starting to be pretty much behind, so they become not only more expensive (which does not really matter), but more importantly much slower...
Also on the workstation market, their desktop SUCKS, its just a pain to use. They are still stuck in the pre-win95 era... It might have been good compared to win3.1 or twm, but it just is not in the same world as GNOME, KDE, WinXP or MacOSX.
Also, their other strengh where there graphics board, they invented modern 3D hardware. And for a long time the roadmap for the PC 3d hardware was simple, they just had to do what SGI already had, but we have now passed a point where the PC hardware has actually more features then the SGI stuff. The only difference now between the pro and game markets are the amount of ram/cache and those "pro" cards exist on PCs. They do cost $ 2000-3000, but they are nowhere near the cost of the SGI workstation that includes them...
SGI has no future. They have been losing money for years. I have been thinking for quite a while that they where a good target for an acquisition, but now that MSFT has bought much of their patents. It might be cheaper to wait for them to go bankrupt and to pick up the pieces. They where in a fast playing game and they have gotten slow.....
Instead of everybody saying "GHz doesn't matter, dummy" why doesn't somebody quote some real benchmarks? I poked around on the web a bit and all the benchmarks I can find either (1) are out of date, or (2) show Alpha, Intel and AMD blowing everybody else out of the water.
In my experience SGI's are slow but are extremely scalable. With IA32-based machines you'd be lucky to get 4 CPU's sharing memory, unlike the 64+ you get from SGI. Very good for scientific codes but not so hot for applications that are either not parallelizable at all, or embarassingly parallelizable such as Seti@Home or ray-tracing a feature film.
You must remember, the R16000 is 64-bit, not 32-bit.
For the record, the R10000 series can run either 32-bit or 64-bit code. All other things being equal, the 32-bit version of a program will run faster than the 64-bit version; you can fit more 32-bit ints into cache at once than 64-bit ints, so the 64-bit version of a program generally suffers more cache misses than its 32-bit counterpart.
On an SGI box, you don't compile for 64-bit unless you absolutely have to address more than 2 GB of virtual memory.
Also, it has 4000k of L2 cache, not 256k or 512k.
That's pretty puny for an SGI. The processors they use in the Origin servers have typically been equipped with 8 MB of secondary cache; the 4 MB version must be just for the workstations, to keep costs manageable.
you are trying to compare two things that are completely different.
On this point, however, you're 100% correct.
I write in my journal
I'm sorry to disapoint you.. but I have no problem agreing with you that the clock speed is not all... But its still important... On our CFD (Computation Flow Dynamics) the kind of thing that SGI super-computers are made to handle.. Our el-cheapo AMD Athlon based cluster kicks the ass of pretty much every SGI in the data-center where it is.. and I think it even kicks the ass of the NEC... So yes, I'm sorry but 3Ghz is more than 4 times 0.7ghz and it does heck a difference.. And if you look at operation per dollar, there is not even a comparison... And I wont tell you how much their OS sucks.. the latest Irix versions feels like linux for 8 years ago (I mean the userspace stuff, I dont know much about their kernel...)..
i dont need a MIPS history lesson. I didn't "forget" any of those CPUs. The R8000 was almost non-existant across SGI's product line.
While it was the first implementation of MIPS4, and it was an FP monster, and had a huge TLB for the time, it really wasn't so hot as a general purpose CPU.
A far as "true 64 bit" in the R4000, which version of IRIX ran on R4k with 64 bit pointers ? 6.2 and 6.5 certainly don't on my IP22.
When the R3k came out it was the first real example of commercially FAST and successful RISC design. It was used in multiple machines from multiple companies. SGI didn't "really" up the ante again until R10k, which was their first offering that was superpipelined and superscalar.
Finally, regarding SGI and clustering:
SGI is not price-competitive with shared-nothing clusters of PCs or Alphas. Nor is it trying to be. You probably know what the O2k/O3k systems are good at and how they differ from any other system being sold today, othewise you wouldn't have responded to me. I think my statement is valid --- the SGI big iron solves problems that shared nothing clusters CANT. Furthermore, they're so much more expensive than shared nothings that if you need shared nothing and buy origin, you're silly.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The R16000 has Out-of-order instruction execution? Sweet! So what was SGI's plan when they made this?
1.???
2.Profit!
3.Build new processor.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.