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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.'"
Intel can't compete with the Opteron on merits alone. It will be interesting to see what they try next.
$2,306,700 and that is if they order their SCO liscenses before mid-October. I wonder whether the state of Utah won't suffer an un-accounted for nuclear accident in close vicinity to SCO's offices.
Still plenty of floor space in the new building.
Los Alamos to get Lightning computer system from Linux Networx
LANL
For more specific technical detail on the supercomputer Linux Networx is building for Los Alamos, go to
LNXI Newsroom
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
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.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Yeah, and you also need to reboot your Pentiums to run 16-bit code.
It is just the state of a flag in a control register. In particular, see page 68 of
AMD's Opteron System Programming Guide.
64-bit mode is enabled with the flip of bit 8 of the EFER Model-Specific Register. Otherwise it defaults to 32-bit mode. OS designers should test/set this bit just before running a thread in the scheduler, or jumping into system code as it can only be modified by code running in ring 0. This is the same way people treated the Virtual-8086 (16-bit) mode bit in CR0. In fact, you can combine the protected-mode, virtual-8086 mode, and "long mode" bits to have a variety of register-size and memory addressing modes per thread.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
This is already possible gcc -m32|-m64; granted both the 32-bit and 64-bit libraries need to be available. 32/64-bit compatibility is supported in SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 (SLES8); and will be available in RHEL 3.0.
Debian developers are also working on a port to Opteron that does/will support 64 bit Kernel with 32-bit and 64-bit compatibility.
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!
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Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
I saw quite a few of their new clusters ready to ship out. I had to constantly wipe the drool off my face while I watched them assemble 2GHZ dual Opteron boxes with 2GB RAM per processor. Their tech is impressive. They have their Ice Box control units and quite a bit of custom control/monitoring hardware that makes building your own cluster seem less advantageous.
They boast #3 on the worlds fastest super computers, so questions about Linux on the "Enterprise" should be easily resolved.
This Tom's hardware review of Opteron vs. Xeon is quite interesting to give a better feel for comparison to todays speeds.
It will be nice when we have some numbers to compare Itanium II direct 64 bit to Opteron, although it doesn't seem much can save the Itanic IMHO.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
...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...
" I want to know how much faster 64-bit native stuff will run vs. 32-bit stuff."
1 7.html
Check it out:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030422/opteron-
Start there and read the next couple pages. Native 64-bit runs up to 30% faster.
As far as 64-bit native q3a probably not until the end of the year when a more stable Win-64 build is available. Although there is already a Half-Life2 64-bit build running on Win-64 Alpha, which may lead to some leaked figures earlier.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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).
In Opteron, 64-bit apps cannot be run under a 32-bit OS. Opteron doesn't recognize code as being 64-bit code unless long-mode is enabled, and once long mode is enabled the OS must be 64-bit (because all switches to more privileged code also switch to 64-bit mode).
Being able to run 32-bit apps under a 64-bit OS was one of the absolutely required features for Opteron, however.
(yeah, I work at amd)
I am not a sig.
When I read stories such as this, I really start to wonder what type of dumbfucks run IBM. By closing the hardware support for the 970, they've bascially prevented their chip from becoming a player in these massively parallel computing environments.
Who wants to buy 3000 IBM or Apple branded boxes when you can get 64-bit Opterons with whatever box maker you want? Doesn't that make a lot more sense to the bottom line? The most annoying part is I am sure you are bound to using IBM service contracts as part of the deal.
They are buying the cluster from Linux Networx who are a Canopy Group company Like SCO. Perhaps Linux Networks customers are immune to the SCO claim. I think it would be interesting to ask them, and Canopy who obviously support the SCO claim.
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
Software failure: Slashdot's system posted my comment in the wrong position. Hopefully this will be posted as an answer to Jaysyn, under comment #6704329
My comment: 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.
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.
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