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.'"

Comments

Re:32 bit swapping to 64bit

[Fallen Kell]

To my knowledge this is NOT the case. Now, it might be an issue with the OS that they are using (i.e. the OS might not be able to run 32bit applications in 64bit mode, and vice-versa).

Sorry to be bringing up a MS product, but their new 64bit Windows will be able to run 32bit programs with in 64bit OS mode, but not 64bit programs in 32bit mode (at least from my current understanding of the new product line). However, there was some performance hits, at least at the time that I read about these features (a few months back), so it may or may not still be the case now.

I am sure it won't be long for Linux to be able to run 32bit applications and 64bit applications within the 64bit OS version. Especially since MS figured out a way to do this, it shouldn't be too hard for Linux to be able to do so as well.

Re:Chinese and Los Alamos

[Sokie]

All the troll/flamebait moderators must be without power.

Someone already pointed out that the Opeterons are fabricated at the Fab30 in Dresden. AFAIK, AMD has no fabs in China and I'm not aware that they even do assembly there.

But the most farciful (Note to grammer Nazi's: Yes I did just make up that word.) statement is your post is this one:

What would stop them from putting data-wrangling code into the Opteron chips?

So even if the Opteron was fabbed in China, you think that the Chinese James Bond is just going to slip in an entirely new chip design into the assembly line and none of the automated or manual microscopic inspections each chip undergoes is going to notice that there are an extra 25,000 transistors over there and these other 30,000 transistors are in the wrong place?

And as another person pointed out, Intel does very little manufactering in the USA these days. At least AMD has a fab in Texas. I couldn't find any info on Intel's fab locations quickly, but I don't recall that they have a large scale one in the USA anymore, but that's complete guestimating.

You sound as bad as the lady at work that thinks buying Microsoft is her patriotic duty!

Re:The key

[evilviper]

But Intel has something in the server market that AMD doesn't: a reputation.

And what do you think a reputation really counts for exactly??? Especially in the "commodity hardware" market?

Intel's specs can't come anywhere close to AMD in ANYTHING. AMD has Intel beat in: price, performance, heat, power, maximum operating temperatures, and (lower) heat output.

we'll see how many companies jump on the bandwagon this early.

Lots of companies jumped on the Linux bandwagon quickly, and the operating system is really more crucial than the hardware. If companies can make that switch, a little jump to Opteron is nothing.

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.

Really? First of all, what evidence do you have that AMD is ANY less reliable than Intel? Secondly, the reliability of an individual component isn't anywhere near as important in a cluster... If it was, you wouldn't see even Intel processors being used, you'd only see Alphas, PPCs, Sparcs, etc.

Besides, I would hardly call just about ANY x86 system an "enterprise-level" system.

Not to mention that Intel's profit margin is HUGE when it comes to the server market

What does that have to do with anything? Not like your enterprise is going to care which company is making more money. Intel can't take enough of a loss for a long period of time to be competitive with AMD.

Re:The key

[javiercero]

Who in their right mind implements an IIS farm, and spends $100K to boot, jeezus!

"Go price out an eight-way Dell 8450 server. Then tell me about low-end."

Go and price a nice sun fire, or a nice IBM regatta and get back to us kid. Yes those Dells are low end in the realm of servers....

Power consumption problem

[DV]

One of the very serious problem related to building
Itanium clusters is their very high power
consumption and the associated heat removal problem.
It's okay for a few server in a room, but for
cluster trying to pack boxes is a key point of the
architecture. Apparently Opteron is not too bad
since there are dual Opteron in 1U server format
design commonly available, and it was overheating
that would be known by now, but for the Itanium(2)
cluster I know off, they never managed to get the
full cluster running without bringing either the
power supply down or the air conditionning down.

Itanium 1 was notoriously power hungry and
a common source of joke about this, Itanium 2 is
certainly better in this respect, but the clock
speed has been multiplied by nearly 3, I really
doubt they could compensate the initial problem
enough to get the new high speed chip to get back
to a decent consumption.

On the other hand Opteron seems quite better
probably getting the benefit of all the power
consumption research that AMD did during the 90's
where AMD chip were at the time consuming significantly more than Intel equivalents.

Now if someone has the time to make a search
for the advertized power consumption of both chip
that would be a really interesting post :-)

Daniel

Re:Wasteful

[evilviper]

Not only do Intel P4 processors produce more heat, and use more energy for the same performance as their AMD counterparts, but Intel processors also have a lower operating threshold than similar-performing AMD processors, by about 20 degrees celsius.

Let's review shall we?

Intel P4: Runs Hotter, Can't handle high temperatures, more expensive.
AMD: Runs cooler, Easilly handles much higher temperatures, and are far cheaper.

So tell me again why anyone should buy from Intel.