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New SGI Altix 3000
dlloyd writes "SGI has just publicly announced the Altix 3000 series of computers that can scale from 4 to hundreds of processors, with up to 64 processors per single system image. Processors each come in a C brick that has 4 CPUs. I/O is done though IX and PX bricks (12 PCI slots per brick, IX bricks have a base I/O controler and two ultra 160 disks inside), just like on the Origin 3900 series. Anything more than 8 CPUs (2 C bricks) is connected by R bricks, which route the NumaLink packets between nodes. The NumaLink network is good for an aggregate 6.4 gigabytes/sec to *each* node. That scales as you add more C and R bricks. Basically, you can think of this as SGI's origin 3000 series, except that it runs Linux and has Itanium2 processors. The performance and scalability is like nothing that has ever run Linux and is *far* ahead of the competition. For those of you who wonder why anyone would need a 64 processor Linux machine, many scientific and technical customers prefer running their code on large, single system image machines. Large single system image machines are also less labor intensive to maintain and admin, plus they work much better on code that needs to share memory and pass messages between threads (even myrinet and mpi is glacial compared to the SGI numalink network and running code multithreaded)."
IX, C and R bricks
The more expensive his LEGO gets...
Tournament Management Online &
Imagine a... Bang!
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
For a moment I realized I had the chance to make a silly first post remark. Then I hesitated a minute and realized I be more on topic with a mandatory Beowulf remark.
Is that something you would like to share with the class, Altix?
Hmmmm, you seem a little touchy about the subject, and you posted as an AC. One might be inclined to think you had an interest in SGI.
Perhaps you've purchased a LOT of SGI stock in the last year, MR. ROBERT R. BISHOP! Ha! Thought you could sneak in an anonymous post, but you underestimated the analytical and investigative abilities of us Slashdotters.
Nice try.
So, got any old O2's laying around gathering dust, that you don't need anymore?
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SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With all those bricks invovled, maybe they should call it the SGI Tetrix.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
IMHO, nothing looks meaner, sexier, or more artificially intelligent than a huge rectangular box with hard corners. None of this "curvy" shit that seems to be everwhere or these "sweeping, romantic lines" that really mean "I am a pussy computer."
I mean, give me the old Thinking Machines look any old day: HARD black edges with BLOOD red LEDs and enough redundancy in appearance to give the impression not only of massive parallelism, but also of massive unemotional BRUTE FORCE!
Of course, if the investing public at large learns this, then the analysts will have to readjust their ratings, introducing a new one - "Extra Strong Buy" that simply means buy, while "Strong Buy" will mean hold, "Buy" will mean sell, and so on.
And once the public catches on to that, . . .
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SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!