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SAPAC Unveils New Australian Supercomputer
Sean Burford writes "The South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (SAPAC) has unveiled its new AU$1.7 Million supercomputer
named Hydra. It is an IBM 1350 Linux cluster with 126 compute nodes (xSeries 335), 1 head node (xSeries 335), 1 storage
node (xSeries 345) and 1 managment node (xSeries 345). Hydra has a peak theoretical performance of 1.2 Teraflops, and has currently benchmarked at 682 Gigaflops. The current benchmark
places it in the fastest three supercomputers in Australia and equivalent to the current number 80 in the world.
The cluster has a total of
258 2.4Ghz Intel Xeon processors and 258GB of RAM. SAPAC expects to achieve a benchmark closer to 700 Gigaflops with further tuning. Hydra is hosted at The University Of Adelaide, who already host a
40 node cluster of Sun e420 machines."
be very, very careful around this one mate.
It is very, very dangerous.
Look at the size of the heatsink on that one!
And this buggers attck fast. And I mean real fast.
Crikey!
They are still going to have to upgrade when Doom 3 comes out
They must be worried about Global Warming.
Actually, Athlon is not faster than the P4 Xeons at double precision floating point. Double precision is frequently required for scientific computing and is used in the Linpack benchmark for the top500.
The current dual Athlon chipset is the 760MPX. The Intel i7501 is the preferred chipset for dual P4. It supports dual channel ECC DDR ram and the 533MHz FSB. These days, nobody wants non-ECC ram for a top 500 cluster. It's not that much more expensive these days compared to decently rated non-ECC ram.
Then there's the cost of air conditioning 258 Athlons...
I'd say they made the right decision.
We're just a few days from bringing up a 300 processor cluster of the exact same type of computers they are using, so maybe I can shed some light. There are several reasons for picking Xeons over Athlons at the moment.
1. If your app uses double precision floating point, and you can recompile your app using SSE2, an Intel will easily beat the AMD. AMD does scalar floating point operations faster per clock. Intel does vector flops faster. Most interesting real-world problems use vector flops.
2. Memory bandwidth. Most chipsets can only deliver a fraction of their theoretical bandwidth. I've seen speed differences of 25% running code on identically configured machines, one having Intel E7500 and the other with a ServerWorks GC-LE (the ServerWorks smokes...) And those are *good* chipsets. I have yet to see an Athlon chipset that wasn't crap.
3. Managability. The x335's are pretty damned slick. I *love* the built-in KVM switch and remote diagnostics. You can daisy chain north of 21 nodes together (I think 35!) and you just have one cable coming off of them.
4. Total cost of ownership. Our previous p3 cluster was assembled (before I arrived) from Pricewatch parts. We initially experienced a 25% failure rate on memory, and spend an inordinate amount of time fixing random problems. 40 of the p3 nodes takes more than three times as much administrator time as 160 IBM x335's. Spending an extra $50,000 on good, quality parts is cheaper than hiring a competent sysadmin. Don't "efficient" yourself to death.
Having said all that, I'm *really* looking forward to Opteron. We're getting some in a week or so. 64 bit + SSE2 support is going hard to beat.
I'm sorry. This just canNOT go unanswered. Nay, we must resort to blatant copyright violations to cure this NOW. The quote is from the late Douglass Adams's book, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Geeks around the world resonate with Adams's humor, such that a good number of /. references are to his work.
..." he paused, "... the Answer!"
So go read the book! Now! Meanwhile, to whet your whistle, and explain the 42 reference, here are the pertinant excerpts from Hitchhiker's guide:
Chapter 25: There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.
And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.
It was the size of a small city.
Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.
On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks.
Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.
For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel.
The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep.
It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into existence?"
[...]
"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us
"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.
"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
"Everything!" they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
"Tricky," he said finally.
"But can you do it?"
Again, a significant pause.
"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement."
"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.
"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it."
[...]
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
"How long?" he said.
"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.
[... skip ahead to chapter 27, seven a
INsigNIFICANT
This couldn't be further from the truth. Ask the postgraduates, who have Mac LCIIs and 486-DX33s on their desks (I kid you not). Ask the academics, who have been retrenched in recent years (in some facultis, 25% of academic staff lost their jobs because of the university's financial problems), ask the users of its library, which has HUGE funding problems.
Whilst the new machine may be very nice and have some power, the University of Adelaide really sees it only as a PR campaign (hell, it even made it to Slashdot!), rather than anything significant for the sake of scientific advancement - okay, the researchers, who will use it may have a different opinion, but not the University iself.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.