Slashdot Mirror
Los Alamos to Use AMD's Opteron in Linux Clusters
nuke-alwin writes "eWeek is reporting that Los Alamos National Laboratory announced it will use more than 3,300 Opteron chips in two of its Linux clusters. According to the article 'The key to Opteron, as it tries to gain traction not only against Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium chip but also its 32-bit Xeon offerings, is its ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications equally well.'"
But Intel has something in the server market that AMD doesn't: a reputation. AMD is just breaking into this market, and we'll see how many companies jump on the bandwagon this early.
I've worked for enough good-sized companied to know that a difference of a few thousand (even a few hundred-thousand) dollars isn't as important as reliability when you get into enterprise-level systems. The old saying, 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', rings true for Intel as well.
Not to mention that Intel's profit margin is HUGE when it comes to the server market - such is the luxury of being the only x86 gig in town. Intel can stand to slash prices dramatically and still turn a profit. Remember how they almost bankrupted AMD a few years back when AMD promised its 6x86 chips would always be 25% cheaper than a comparable Pentium.
Yeah, this will be very interesting.
" The old saying, 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', rings true for Intel as well."
Are you for real? LOL, Intel entry in the server market was as cheap low end, nothing to do with "reliabitlity" or anything. All that intel has in corporate accounts is: well we are cheaper than sun. Now there is someone saying, well we're cheaper than Sun AND Intel. Intel is SOL, this whole new representation of Intel as quality server stuff is laughable. LOL!
I don't understand why it received *interesting* rating. This is more of a flamebate.
First, Intel makes their chips where it is the cheapst. Pentium was designed from a group in Isreal. Consider the history of Isreal collabrating with Jews in US spying and steal info out of US military and companies, would it be possible that the Isrealies gov might thought about pressure the researh group to put some special circuit into the chip so they can steal more US secrets. In addition, Intel regularly ship the material to overseas for final assemblies in places like Malay. Remember that IRS wanted 600mil from Intel because Intel ship material overseas for final assembly? The IRS considered it as not totally made in USA therefore they don't get the tax credit.
Besides, if you look at motherboards, I can't find anyone making them from the US. The market is simply too compatitive. The labor along is too expesnive in US. Companies like Intel is a globalized company and they will ship stuff to where it is the cheapest. It is no better then AMD.
Personally, I believe that Intel's marketing people and Berret need to get their heads out of their collective asses and quit telling people what they need and don't need. The current slogan at Intel is "One Generation Ahead". Well, it's time to put the slogan to practice and produce some 64bit chips that is backward comp. to the existing 32bit apps and beat everything that AMD can dream up.
...is that AMD opened their platform well enough to the LinuxBIOS developers while Intel basically told them to screw off and live with EFI. Here is what Ron Minnich had to say earlier on the LinuxBIOS mailing list.
What he *actually* said was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Granted, it's debatable as to how much initiative he took in its creation, but he was in fact involved in legislation and funding that helped to shape it.
Whenever I see this twisting of words and facts perpetuated, it reminds me of the fools who just can't say nuclear (it's "noo-clee-ar", not "noo-kyoo-lar", damn it!!!).
Loading...
That's a little different, since the PowerPC spec was designed to be 64-bit from the start. The MPC74xx, PowerPC 75x, and 60x series utilized a 32-bit subset of the 64-bit spec. So everything you do with the 32-bit subset is valid with the 64-bit spec.
quote:
I've worked for enough good-sized companied to know that a difference of a few thousand (even a few hundred-thousand) dollars isn't as important as reliability when you get into enterprise-level systems. The old saying, 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', rings true for Intel as well.
This is definitely right, but I wonder if the name-brand is worth it if they're paying twice the amount for Intel vs. AMD.
The article says Linux Networx got the contract for just under $10 million, and will deliver 2816 Opterons.
Now, I've no idea how much the hardware costs them, but let's assume $8 million; the other $2 million goes towards salaries/profit.
$8 million / 2816 Opterons = $2850.91 per Opteron.
Compare that to the PowerEdge 3250 (Itanium) from Dell: $6229 per Itanium.
I'm sure Intel has quite a mark-up on Itaniums and could get the price lower when trying to win a contract, but AMD is in the same position with the Opteron as well.
Either way, a nice win for AMD, as it seems that the Opteron really is the best x86 processor at the moment.
Colocated Linux Server - $60/mo
Why would you even want to mix-and-match with Linux (or BSD)? With Windows just about all programs are propritary, so you have to run whatever you can get, but with Linux, you just have to recompile and get everything to 64-bit, no problem.
Yes, I know some people run propritary Linux programs as well, but those are rare (and it's their own fault anyhow... *nag, nag, nag* )
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hate to break it to you but most corporate networks are built from scratch if you're expanding to new physical locations. Well, if you're actually serious about your question, then I'd say yes... in fact this year alone I've done roughly 6 such projects and with budgets ranging from (approx) US$50k to a cool mil.
To go really low-end then build your own damn servers dammit... heck some of the custom servers we've built are at least at par with the 8450, if not better. 2U and/or 3U casings are not that expensive nowadays.
Well anyway, if IIS server farms (wtf?!) are your "thing"... there is still AMD... and don't tell me your "IIS server farm" (which of course implies Windows 2000) which costs under 100k runs Xeons?
Man if I'm the one in charge of whatever it is you've done... I'd fire your ass and kill that asshole of a boss of yours.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
At The Register. Sad that all this power is being used to simulate nuclear weapons (and presumably speed up GWB's adoption of battlefield mini-nukes), rather than its proper purpose of getting more fps at UT2003.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I really don't think you can compare an Opteron to a Xeon. Think Opteron v. Itanium.
My point is that, on price, AMD's processors are far less expensive than Intel, while still being better than them in just about every way. For Intel to prevent Opteron systems from taking over the market, they are going to have to eat some of the cost of their own chips long enough to keep people from even thinking about using AMD products. As I said, I don't believe they have enough cash to make that happen... That means they either need to make a HUGE leap forward with their processors, and come out with something that is actually better than AMD has, or their market is going to quickly slide out from under them.
Again, you are comparing two entirely different product lines. I wouldn't expect the first few chips (that are almost completely redisigned) to come out and be completely competitive with old technology, established chips. It won't take long for prices to drop, performance to improve, etc., but don't expect everything from the very first of an entirely new processor line.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You call people naive and then refer to 'the supremacy of good over evil'.. think about it dumbass.
That's right. In several email conversations, I questioned Vint Cerf about this, and he said that Al Gore was extremely important in making DarpaNet, a research tool at a U.S. government organization, into the Internet, a public utility available to all.
DARPA is the U.S. government's violence research department. DARPA is devoted to finding more efficient ways to kill people. In the beginning of networking computers together, there was no intention of benefiting anyone.
According to Mr. Cerf, Al Gore recognized the importance of a public computer network long before other public officials knew anything about computers, and made sure the public network had funding.
Some have called Mr. Cerf, "The Father of the Internet", but, as his biography says, many people were involved. Mr. Gore was the main promoter, "father", of the public utility we now call the Internet.
Simulating nuclear weapons is a heck of a lot better than finding out 'the old way'. If we're going to HAVE nukes (and there's no turning back now, I'm afraid) we may as well have the right ones for the job. I'd rather have them develop 'right-size' weapons for the post-cold war era than use giant 1970's warheads on third-world dictators. I find it foolish to demand reductions in 'collateral damage' while simultaneously demanding limits on harmless weapons simulations aimed at reducing said damage.
I'd rather have 20 very accurate, very small nukes in our arsenal than the thousands of ICBMs we have now, it would be just as effective a deterrent; getting there means money and (simulated) testing.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Fantasy time! If I worked in Los Alamos I would; 1 definately be in the lead in SET@home, and 2 My Quake FPS would be pretty good I suspect...
later.
..........FULL STOP.
You still want to be using a CPU from the 70s for how much longer? You still desire 8 and 16 bit apps do you? You still run a.out binaries under linux?
Granted, if you plan on using an Itanium on a Windows platform, you may have some creature comfort programs unavailable, but as for Linux and HPUX, everything you need is there. Also, backwards compatability with parisc 32 and 64 bit apps are available under HPUX. From http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/infolibrary/w
Oh, and with your Opteron, which compiler are you going to use to get performance anywhere near the performance of the Intel compiler for the Itanium? You know those spec numbers were most likely done with handcrafted assembler from AMD and unreproducable by you and me. I was able to measure _exactly_ the memory bandwidth of the Itanium as reported by Intel. And, yeah, its fast.