Slashdot Mirror
Fastest US Supercomputer Runs Linux
jgercken writes "The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has brought online a 11.8 teraflops supercomputer based on the Linux operating system, comprised of ~2,000 Itanium processors, and assembled by HP. Touted to be the fastest unclassified computer in the US, its main duties will be atmospheric chemistry, systems biology, catalysis and materials science."
But does it run Linux?
::ducks::
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Whoa, that's gonna cost them in SCO licenses.
But seriously, I wonder what kind of stand governmental implementations of Linux are taking on the fiaSCO.
If you notice this is based on PEAK Performance, aka Theoretical Max, not the best they've gotten out of it . . .
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
They clearly aren't considering the Powerstack 5000
tcd004
Also after reading the whole press release I'm stuck with a few measly pictures of a bunch of HP rack servers running a processor that I won't be able to buy (let alone afford) for awhile longer. There is no mention about how much heat the thing produces, or how much energy it takes to run it. I hope the Ph.D.s running the whole thing realize that while they are trying to do stuff for the "Department of Energy" they are releasing so many thousands of pounds of junk in the land/air/water to run this giant supercomputer.
Can it run Quake II properly with 200 bots set to godlike abilities? ;)
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
Makes you wonder for a second what they're doing with the [SECRET - EYES ONLY] hardware.
My guess is that they're working on NP-hard, but useful problems, like finding ways to crack hard encryption via shortcuts that work half the time.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Being the Department of Energy I though they would have used AMD chips so they could use the excess heat to drive a power plant.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
OMFG has slashdot gotten so fscking lazy as to not even read the SUMMARY now!?
Touted to be the fastest unclassified computer in the US, its main duties will be atmospheric chemistry, systems biology, catalysis and materials science.
1. NEC's Earth Simulator, 41 teraflops, Japan
2. Hewlett-Packard's ASCI Q, 20.5 teraflops, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Classified, Nuclear Weapons testing)
3. IBM's ASCI White, 12.3 teraflops, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Classified, Nuclear Weapons testing)
4. Fujitsu's Primepower, 12 teraflops, National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan.
5. Hewlett-Packard's Itanium2, 11.8 teraflops, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
But then again that chart goes of R(peak) instead of R(max)
Now, let's see if we can /. the world's fastest linux powered unclassified computer.
Got URL?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
RC5-1024 here we come!
Call me back in about 200 years.
Most likely the #1 Unfunny Meta/Moderator on
http://www.emsl.pnl.gov/mscf
:)
a more direct link to info about the facility. EMSL is a scientific user facility, designed to be a collaboration point and resource for environmental and molecular sciences (Environmental and Molecular Sciences Laboratory).
You can read about what the computer will be used for, what stuff is inside it, even see the job status. It's pretty neat stuff. The folks over there should be quite proud of what they've done. Yes, I work at PNNL
It is a demon of a machine. It's huge. It's very fast. I hope some good life/world saving chemistry comes out of it.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
But according to Apple the G5 is 10% quicker under their latest benchmark tests.
Well first, your site has that spark of a "I'm a Tesla Alien Abduction Genius Who Will Solve Everythin gWith Cold-Fusion" genius. That frankly make me seriously consider whether I should even click on the next link.
Then you have (DONATE HERE) banners that (NO HERE) make your site really (GIMMEE) hard to read. The more massive projects dont beg like that. If you cant/wont support it, that's what the GPL was for.
And lastly, the style presented reminds me of the magazine, OMNI. There's that feel of spoofery/hokey kind of "I'm code-God" that just makes me want to click that nice xkill on that window.
It may be a good project, but the presentation really sucks. Even the basic Black text on white with simple images looks cleaner/better than that.
We all know it is a superior system. And with $1.5M in licensing fees they will collect for this particular installation, they will develop it even further.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
that 10,000 Opteron Cray supercomputer comes online...although I guess that system may not be unclassified.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I'm not EVEN going to look at it until YOU put in more exclamation points!!!!!!!!! and BOLD TEXT!!!!!!!!
The RADICAL NAVIGATION BAR is absolutely AMAZING!!!!!!!!! That kind of NATURAL CAMOUFLAGE of VITAL NAVIGATION ELEMENTS is a SUPER-COOL way to design GROOVY WEB SITES!!!!!!!!!
In the dim times there was one company called Cray that built big, expensive custom designed vector supercomputers. It took forever to build one so Cray could always insure they were profitable because they always new how many orders they had well in advance and could staff and spend appropriately and they were pretty much the only game in town.
One day SGI got tired of doing just fluffy graphics and built the MIPS R8000 which was probably the first really successful CMOS supercomputer on a chip. They completely carved up Cray from the low end up and eventually pushed them into a merger from hell that nearly destroyed both companies.
Around this time the Department of Energy had to give up setting off nuclear bombs to see if they actually worked and got in the business of funding these massive supercomputers mostly to simulate bombs and then some other stuff too. Unfortunately the DOE changed companies and architecture with each new contract. They managed to suck SGI, Intel, IBM, Cray, HP and countless others in to this prestige contest and I doubt its been particularly good for any of them. You see these are one off systems, that require a massive very custom engineering effort and the R&D effort seldom pays off. Its just not a good way to do business spending massive engineering effort when your usually lucky to sell one system. If you get a second one you usually have to start from scratch and do it all over again.
They are great for prestige and maybe some of the R&D effort does translate into the companies product line but, IMHO, I think a smart, well managed computing company wouldn't touch these with a ten foot pole. Microsoft sure doesn't seem interested in pouring any effort in to trying to land one of these contracts.
If the U.S. government had a clue they would find a way back to pouring all their money in to Cray to develop the specialized vector processors and find a new little Cray Jr. company to specialize in building the giant Linux clusters and encourage companies like IBM and HP to get out of this massive distraction from their core business.
McBride: We have learned that your government secret agency is using Linux IP in violation of our intellectual property rights.
Secret Government Agency: We have learned that SCO owes billions of dollars in back taxes, and that you have an affinity for barnyard animals.
McBride: But I havn't been on a farm in 40 years!
Secret Government Agency: That's not what these pictures generated by our new Linux supercompter say.
paintball
Its main duties will be atmospheric chemistry, systems biology, catalysis and materials science.
IOW, studies in dealing with the power consumption of 2000 Itanium processors.