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Supercomputer Breaks the $100/GFLOPS Barrier

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the new-kid-in-town dept.

Hank Dietz writes "At the University of Kentucky, KASY0, a Linux cluster of 128+4 AMD Athlon XP 2600+ nodes, achieved 471 GFLOPS on 32-bit HPL. At a cost of less than $39,500, that makes it the first supercomputer to break $100/GFLOPS. It also is the new record holder for POV-Ray 3.5 render speed. The reason this 'Beowulf' is so cost-effective is a new network architecture that achieves high performance using standard hardware: the asymmetric Sparse Flat Neighborhood Network (SFNN)." Because this was a university project, KASY0 was assembled entirely by unversity students, which while being a source of cheap labor, is also a good way to get a lot of students of involved in a great project.

9 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by fryguy451 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine a Beowu... errr... Oh..

  2. Let the Beowulf cluster jokes begin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Note to moderators, Beowulf cluster jokes CANNOT be offtopic.

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf cluster jokes!

  3. Let's not get too excited.... by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Supercomputer Breaks the $100/GFLOPS Barrier

    Not after you factor in the SCO license fees.

  4. It's a university project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Remember, everyone, this was a university project. *BSD was also a university project originally, and now *BSD is dying. So obviously university projects are not of very high quality.

  5. Students as Slave Labor by gremlin_591002 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ponders while there are not University students pictures in the National Geographic Article on Slavery....

  6. So much power... by krahd · · Score: 5, Funny

    and it still can't run Doom III at a decent rate.

    --krahd

    mod me up, scottie!

    --
    mod me up scottie!
  7. Here is the bill! by borgdows · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dear customer,

    At the cheap introductory price of 699$ for 80 lines of code in the Linux kernel, it will cost you 8,377,500$ by kernel since we have discovered that in fact 1000000 lines of SCO IP were copied into Linux.

    Designation .. Price .. Qty .. Total
    Linux kernel .. 8,377,500$ .. 128 .. 1,118,400,000$

    So you must pay us only 1,118,400,000$, and in my kind almighty I will offer you a discount of 118,400,000$ so you only have to pay ONE BILLION DOLLAR if you pay before tomorrow!

    Please send you creditcard number at darl@sco.com

    Sincerely yours,

    -- Darl Mac Bride

  8. Re:How many university have larger clusters? by Chilles · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wonder how many "linux-cluster-supercomputers" are out there which would easyly make it into the top 500, but noone has ever heard of....

    Well... probably more than one, definitely no more than 500.

  9. What about $170K by Axe · · Score: 3, Funny
    That they own to SCO, that damn commies? Did they at least aknowledge using stolen property?

    What a shame. Freeloaders. They would never be able to achieve such performance if not for the fruits of labour of SCO .. eeeh.. lawers?

    --
    <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>