Big Mac achieves around 14 TFlops with 128 Nodes

mzs writes "The Virginia Tech G5 cluster has achieved around 80% of its peak performance in preliminary Linpack testing with 128 nodes according to Jack Dongarra at the Top 500. "They're getting about 80 percent of the theoretical peak," Dongarra said. "If it holds, and it's unclear if it will, it has the potential to be the world's second most powerful machine." Typically getting 60% of peak in the Top 500 lists is quite good. If the Big Mac cluster achieves 60% of peak it would displace the 2,300 2.4 GHz Xeon cluster at LLNL for the number three spot on the current list."

Comments

Mmm Big mac

[pheared]

Anyone remember Happy Meal Ethernet and Big Mac Ethernet?

nope...

[Durinia]

Title is wrong - they get 80% efficiency on 128 nodes. The 14 TFlops number is if that efficiency is held through the full size of the machine (2000+ processors).

Re:nope...

[nate1138]

And that isn't very likely. The efficiency of large clusters drops with every node. Expect somewhere in the 60% range as a final efficiency. I think.

Re:nope...

[physicsboy500]

I was going to say that something seemed terribly wrong... because when I read that I interpreted it as 128 nodes were pumping out 80% of it's peak at 14Tflops...

if that were the case then the last 972 nodes would almost be a complete waste if they only gave a 20% preformance increase.

good call on that Durinia!

What happened to the federal controls?

[BWJones]

So, looking at this, I am wondering if the federal constraints on computer exports are still in place? This Apple supercluster shows that just about anyone now could afford to build a supercomputer giving smaller countries access to compute cycles never before dreamed of for relatively few $$'s

Re:What happened to the federal controls?

[bofkentucky]

Nukes, nukes, and more nukes
Testing/developing a nuke program is much easier on a supercomputer than attempting live tests like the USSR, USA, France, Red China, and the UK did back in the 40-70's. Infact, a test detonation by a "unknown" would be sufficent grounds for a beat down by those countries or your neighbors (see Israel vs. Iraq, 1981) India and Pakistan have been allowed nukes mainly as a local deterent to keep 1-2 billion people from dying in South-Central Asia in the Indo-Muslim war that has been brewing for 50 years .

G4, G5

[inertia187]

When will Slashdot add or change the G4 icon to G5?

Of course...

[grub]

There are weenies that will say "Psstt.. you know that #2 computer in the Big 500? It only has one button on the mouse!"

That's nothing...

[GillBates0]

Big Mac also achieved around 14 KTons with 128 kids.

Re:To quote G. W. Bush: "Enough is Enough"

[dthable]

Yes. Yes it will.

Topic Icon

[47Ronin]

Time to replace the G4 icon with a G5 pic dont you think??

Like this for example > http://www.apple.com/g5processor/

Premature

[jmichaelg]

The article says

"We're just making up numbers here," Dongarra cautioned. "We don't have real numbers yet. If they get 80 percent, it will be slightly faster than (ASCI Q, the current No. 2 on the Top 500 list)."

Then a little later, the article says:

Lockhart cautioned that even if Big Mac beat most of the machines in the current Top 10, the list, which is compiled twice a year, is a moving target. Lockhart said there are four or five new supercomputers coming online that also may qualify for places in the Top 10.

So to summarize, the data aren't in and nobody will really know where the machine ranks until all the data are in. About the only outcome one would expect is that the machine would outperform older technology.

SETI array

[darc]

Interestingly, a fun number to compare against is SETI@Home's array power, which is approximately 15 teraflops. [See the SETI@Home FAQ]

Although they don't run Linpack, and therefore can't be considered on Top500 the same way, it's still cool to know that SETI would still place second on the supercomputing list. Back in 2001, they were averaging a very large number of teraflops as well, (>10TF) the figure is on the internet somewhere. In 2001, that was greater than the top three supercomputing sites combined.

It would be interesting to see the power of the Seti array using today's processors.. which are arugably far faster than 2001's, despite the short amount of time.

Still, SETI outperforms this mac cluster, although it's obvious that SETI's distribution model is clearly not usable for the same problems that need to be solved.

Pretty cheap

[randombit]

From article: Dongarra said the cost is so low he questioned whether the college got a special discount.

At $5.2 mil for 1100 machines, I think they paid full market price; that's over $4,500 per machine, and currently Apple is selling dual 2 Ghz G5's for ~$3000. And that's with lots of extras that they wouldn't want in a cluster (ATI 9600, CDRW, etc), which hopefully they convinced Apple they didn't need... (else they've got a whole lot of Mac keyboards sitting around!)

I wonder how much of the cost was the actual machines, and how much was infrastructure and networking stuff (I can just see 1,100 Macs all powered off one extension cord and a bunch of surge protectors).

Shouldn't the icon read G5?

[crovira]

I'm picking nits here but...

Re:Thats one fast Mac

[SlamMan]

Try again. The VA cluster is running OSX, as seen here.

Wow

[Kelz]

Had no idea hamburgers could run that fast.
Must be the "special" bun in the middle.

Re:Thats one fast Mac

[stevesliva]

This is tremendous advertising for apple, but what about clusters of Power4's and 5's? why wouldnt they out-perform this cluster?

See this list? See all the IBM p690 server systems? They're all running Power4 or Power4+. However, I don't know why they're slower. The PPC970 isn't quite the same as the Power4. Plus all those Power systems are running at 1.3Ghz.