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IBM's Blue Gene powered by Linux
bigjnsa500 writes "Linux will be the main operating system for IBM's upcoming family of 'Blue Gene' supercomputers--a major endorsement for the operating system and the open-source computing model it represents. Blue Gene/L, the first member of the family, will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory. Due in 2004 or 2005, the system will be able to perform 200 trillion calculations per second. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations." Blue Gene has been announced for some time, but it's cool to see how it's shaping up.
Hmm, I wonder why they chose to use SCO's OS. You would think with all the lawsuits they would try to stay away from SCO's software...
ASCI Red Storm google search
This reminds me of an old joke between myself and a buddy (who used to be a nuclear weapons tech at Whitman AFB... "I can neither confirm nor deny the existance of nuclear weapons at...."). We finally design a working missile defense shield... only to have Windows 2000 crash under the load. All hope appears to be lost until an old 486SX Linux box is discovered within a wall, still running, long after the power supply and cpu fans have died.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Maybe not - but given IBM's history, it might be great at playing chess.
Or Tic-Tac-Toe, given the nuclear weapons simulation angle.
In other news, Levi's has announced a lawsuit against IBM, citing the name of the server line could confuse their customers.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I guess you'll never know...
$699/CPU * 65000 CPU = 45,435,000
All you have to do is buy two of those things, and you'll be paying SCO even more money than BayStar Capital
When will these things be able to do my math homework for me.
That's what I really want.
Intelligent, high powered math book reading.
Just a college kid's view though.
-hampton.
"I don't want to start a holy war here..."
Blue Gene/L is expected to operate at about 200 teraflops which is larger than the total computing power of the top 500 supercomputers in the world today.
It should be noted that these super computers won't be for sale... IBM simply leases the cycles, you pay based on the cycles you use every month.
What is slashdot?
kidding aside, are these based on the novel IBM design for having small clusters of wimpy processors sharing sections of memory. The concept being to have each processor running slowly, almost stalled waiting on a memory fetch. (while seeming stupid at first glance, its really diabolically clever since now you can junk all the long pipelines and branch prediction stuff: every single byte that comes from memory will be used by some CPU requesting it, thus you minimize the memmory buss buttle neck that is, ultimately, the limit on most processing).
if this is that design then that 65,000 processors indeed may not be quite as much computing horespower as it sounds. it might indeed be comparable to a smaller handful of G5s.
or maybe i'm full of crap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
~14.9 gigs * 1000?
Somewhere, there's an open source developer who's just realized that his work is being used to the development of nuclear weapons. All jokes about derivative works aside, I think it's a good time to consider the implications of this.
Why are computers still being used for simulating nuclear weapons tests?
Are they trying to pack more megatons of destructive force into each warhead? Don't the major world governments have enough quantity to preclude the need for more powerful units?
Or are the tests run to design "safer" and/or more localized implementations? (Awww, looks like Big Brother has a soft spot after all...)
I'm wondering why they didn't use OS/2....
SCO has FAILED!
Heh, while I realize that innovation has always been important for IBM and making money, it seems like they're trying too much to innovate and not enough to capture market share. It's like they're coming out with all these great inventions but they're pursuing pure science and not having a profit-making strategy.
Of course I realize that I'm probably wrong in some way but this is just how it seems to me.
The IBM research team is currently running a large Linux cluster to simulate Blue Gene.
So then why don't have we have the simulation of Blue Gene run a simulation of Blue Gene two, and that run a simulation of a quantum computer, and that run a simulation of Deep Thought? Then that can run a simulation of the rest of the universe.
Then the two will bicker and argue about who's real, whom created whom, and millions of Matrix freaks will yell "I told you!!!" to those who have ridiculed them so many, many years.
Ahhh, you are forgetting the army of overpriced IBM consultants that you'll have to hire to install the thing.
The IBM research team is currently running a large Linux cluster to simulate Blue Gene.
that is is a 65,000 node cluster with 14.9 terabytes of memory... let's see, 2.2 gig of memory a piece, sweet cluster!
What is slashdot?
The referenced article is dated October 2002. Is this a mistake, or is this old news?
Anyhow, going to the Blue Gene web page, there is a document dated Nov 2002, an overview of BlueGene/L. An excerpt:
The approach we have adopted is to split the operating system functionality between compute and I/O nodes...
The compute node operating system, also called the BlueGene/L compute node kernel, is a simple, lightweight, single-user operating system that supports execution of a single dual-threaded application compute process...
I/O nodes are expected to run the Linux operating system, supporting the execution of multiple processes. Only system software executes on the I/O nodes, no application code.
Well, since it will be running nuclear weapons simulations, they might get around to simulating the half life of plutonium...
--guru
Ok, I might not be a big fan of higher math (completeing the square was enough for me), but what I want to know is what type of "nuclear weapon simulation" equations are going to be so complicated that they would require a while to solve even running at 1 petaflop? Furthermore who is the poor guy who had to come up with these equations? I say they should just run folding or SETI @ Home on it. Can you imagine how long a work unit would take?
sig?
When did Blue Gene change to a nuclear simulation computer? Last I heard it was for protien folding and DNA research, which is why it's called Blue GENE. This way it's like the Utah Jazz.
-B
imagine a beowulf cluster of these..... :)
If we named it Blue Gene Roddenberry, would it write, direct, and produce a show for us better than Enterprise or Voyager?
Do you go with ATI or Nvidia?
Good frame rate for Quake 3??
AA on or off?
VSynch on or off?
Yeah, heard about this a while ago, and was dying to get my hand on their new servers.
but what kind of video card does it have? will have 65,536 monitor support?
Great... now I have to get one.
It better come with a good graphics accelerator.
Finally, they'll have a way of predicting the next SCO legal argument! With all that's going on now, I think we need a supercomputer to find out what sort of legalese SCO will dement next.
65,000 processors x $699/processor= $45,435,000. 45.4 million dollars.
Don't you just know Daryl's about to go apoplectic over all that money IBM is "stealing". Let's face it, he has to really believe in his private universe.
May he pop a blood vessel.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Seeing as it's goning to be running Linux, I'd say the chances of playing a win32 only game on it are pretty slim. It's gonna be a while before wine supports directx 9.
Due to the impending lawsuit from Levi Strauss & Co. (tm), IBM has decided to name the machine the alternative: "Joshua".
It will also be able to play simple games such as tic-tac-toe
< Insert other goofy "War Games" similarities here >
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
Just like the last article, can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these ?!
This machine is clearly a derivative work of Linux, which is clearly a derivative work of our UNIX operating system.
We own it.
Any nuclear weapons it helps produce are clearly a derivative work of the machine, which is clearly a derivative work of Linux, which is clearly a derivative work of our UNIX operating system.
We own them too.
The former Soviet, Chinese, North Korean nuclear weapons programs, using stolen US technologies, (etc)
Yours sincerely
Darl McBride
CEO, The SCO Group, Inc.
Note to self: ask Chris and Blake, if we test the nukes in Utah, will anybody notice?
Perform some nuclear "tests" beforehand to ensure their next legal strategy against SCO will be effective. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
pwn3d.
:)
Love, x86.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations.
See, Microsoft's allies were right all the long.... Linux/Open Source is the choice for Terrorists!
I'm betting SCO is wishing that they went with the $699 per CPU licensing model right now.
There they go using that unconstitutionally licensed OS again... with our tax dollars too. .. that will be able to perform a quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop)...
That oughta give 'em the firepower to prototype the nuclear WMD that can surgically remove the state of Utah without bothering the neighbors.
scripsit Magila:
<pedantic>Um, more importantly I don't think whatever architecture it uses will be binary-compatible with ia32...</pedantic>
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
afaik, the research isn't on weapons development, but explosions research and weapons defense.(The more you know about the explosion the easier it is to design nuclear resistant bunkers and the like)
For those of you wondering why it takes 1 pflop to do such a simulation consider how much computing power it would take to follow each gas molecule in the explosion as it expands. They won't be able to get even remotely close to that precise, obviously. (6x10^23 molecules in 22 liters at room temp, so figure about 10^25 molecules to follow around)
Also, keep in mind that 70% of academic research dollars are defense related. (whether you like that or not, sadly)
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
When we get a supercomputer like this and the end of the article isn't "Some company will use this to find newer more efficient ways of killing people" but instead "Some university will use this to find ways of improving society at large."
I'm dreaming. I know.
fifth sigma, inc.
After having worked with them, I am write-in modding you "+1 Correct"
-CowboyNick
- 65,000 processors
- 16 trillion bytes of memory
- 200 trillion calculations per second
Then I saw what it was to be used for:- nuclear weapons simulations
Good to see where our priorities lie these days.I was not disputing which is better for the task of scalable super computing, a G5 or the new IBM processors. The point is that comparing on the basis of numbers of cpu and not throught says little. the absurdly low g5 count was just to needle the mac haters.
ibm is going great guns with linux -- except on machines sold to actual people. when i can but a thinkpad with linux, and with ibm's thinkpad manual and half-gig of other occasionally useful stuff brought to linux and, hell, what's left of smartsuite ported to linux, i might begin to think that ibm is taking this linux thing seriously.
This is the standard reason given for powerful computers. Isn't it a cliche by now? How about giving some other reasons for supercomputers?
okay, well if you won't say it, I will. Because it has to be said! Otherwise the gods of karma will be angry, and no interesting stories will be posted for seven days.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Blue Gene/L clusters? That would be teh cool!
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Michael Jackson has released a new hit single that denounces this upstart of a project as anything but his lover.
It wouldn't be named after Gene Amdahl now, would it?
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Imagine a beowulf cluster of .....
(hold on).
Oh, never mind.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
It could be argued, actually, that IBM is trying to do some hardcore psychological engineering: "Look! We've got so much confidence in our legal position with Linux, that we're installing it on the world's mpost powerful supercomputer!"
just for the record, I am one of those who think that SCO has neither a claim or a prayer... just trying to be devil's advocate here.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Wrong.
:P
My Aunt and Uncle have been working for IBM since the "glory days" of computing, and through that I realized that IBM has a solid foot in the door. They provide servers/computers for hundreds of companies around the world, with the biggest being probably half or more of the current blue-chip corporations.
We're not in the dot-com era anymore, bud.
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
Well, it's going to be even longer before Bochs supports DX9 then.
65,000? You mean 2^16, right?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
First they say: We create blue GENE. It will be the fastest computer on the earth, and we need it to understand our dna, cure cancer, ect.
:(
And now its about to be build, they use it for nuclear weapon research
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
whoa, how insightful! I was getting tired of same ol' sCO jokes, you know. I mean, why not AIX. AIX is property of IBm. oh wait, aIX is delivative of Unix, which trademark belongs to what, OpenGroup? and copyrights owned by Caldera? some by Novel? sC0? Eric Raymond? Mr. Raymond, please help me figure out who owns what, what component belongs to whom.
otherwise sCO has no chance suing IBm! IBm is immune from law suits. never mind its ThinkPad line is preinstalled with non-IBm os. never mind OS/2 has been dead for years. never mind years ago then-monopoly IBm signed a deal with this young geek who later became the world richest man. IBm owns all rights for everything they sell EXCEPT for Linux, don't they?
never mind any of these, but be careful with Linux because SCO OWNS LINUX, according to McB. or do they? dream on.
They were going to name it "Billy Gene" but the name "Blue Gene" just "Beat It".
Yeah, 9th grade was like some sort of nightmare for me which seems to just live on and on...
It's called government grant money.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory.
Okay, I thought that around the mid 1980's or so, we actually quit measuring in bytes...
So much for 'progressive' technology, I guess 16 trillion just sounded a lot better than a few gig...damn marketing people
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
oh wait, nevermind.
superconducting supercomputers ?
This was supposed to be the real leading edge of computing about 10 years ago and it has vanished.
There is something cooler about superconductors that these building sized clusters can't match.
What's the point of simulating nuclear weapons anyway? Couldn't the government be putting such a machine to better use (like predicting the weather, simulating protein folding, or modelling the cosmos)?
Really shouldn't we have gotten past the point of trying to build technologies that wipe out all life on Earth?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
YaST2 to configure network and printer and update installed packages on CRAY's supercomputer. I couldn't stop thinking myself playing glTron, TuxRacer, TuxKart on CRAY. sounds like my dream machine ... but my apartment has no room for CRAY and my laptop does all the above flawlessly. Not to mention HEAT it will create.
did we not learn anything from watching "War Games" the movie.
Why are computers still being used for simulating nuclear weapons tests?
Just wait until Quake XXXIV is released: global thermonuclear destruction!
Dear Linus,
the kernel is becoming slightly unstable with more than 10 trillion bytes and 65000 CPUs, please try to reproduce the situation. See the attached memory dump file.
There are still non-conventional nuclear weapons to work on. The nirvana of nuclear war are weapons that produce high-energy bursts of neutrons, or some electromagnetic energy like X-rays or gamma rays, but no significant radioactive isotopes. Ideally, you'd like to nuke a target to wipe out all the enemy combatants, then roll in the next day and set up camp.
The atomic bomb was developed by the United States in the Manhattan Project in the forties. At first it was thought that Nazi Germany possessed the atomic bomb but it became clear that this was not so and when Nazi Germany was clearly on the point of defeat Japan became the only target under consideration.
The reason given by the US for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was that this was necessary in order to defeat Japan without a seaborne invasion of the Japanese main islands. This, the Americans said, would have met fierce resistance and would have cost many American as well as Japanese lives. The justification was that by dropping the atomic bomb on a Japanese city many more lives were saved than would have been lost in an invasion. This seems to me to be the ultimate in utilitarian arguments. Was it justified? Neo dies after Smith takes him over, and his clones explode. Trinity is impaled in a crash-landing on the way to the Machine City. The Matrix continues to exist. Were there alternatives? The obvious ones of either dropping the bomb on a uninhabited place and/or giving prior warning were rejected on the grounds that only by dropping the bomb on a city would the Japanese government be convinced of its power.
In so far as the saving of American lives is concerned to the best of my knowledge the rules of war do not allow the taking of civilian lives in order to save casualties amongst one's own military forces. I would therefore say that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was not justified by the saving of American and Japanese lives argument even if that argument were an honest one. There is now a lot of evidence that it was not. The American government knew of the desperate plight of the Japanese. Confined to their home islands by the overwhelming sea and air power of the American and Allied forces, starving and without their own supplies of fuel the collapse of Japan was in any case imminent.
There is much evidence that the real reason for the dropping of the atomic bombs was the desire to ensure the defeat of Japan before the Russians could enter the war in the Far East in strength and thus have a say in the post-war settlement. From this point of view the atomic bombings could be said to be the first act of the Cold War.
I have not seen any moral justification for the dropping of a second bomb on Nagasaki even after the effects of the first bomb had been amply demonstrated at Hiroshima. The desire to test a plutonium bomb (the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium device) may have been the motivation.
...on the day of your daughters wedding. i pledge my ever...ending...loyalty. and i hope that their first child be a masculine child. for your daughters bridal purse
leave an open phone line!
or let me have it so i can mack on some hot h4xx0r chick
Trinity is impaled in a crash-landing on the way to the Machine City.
The Matrix is not destroyed and continues to exist.
Sorry to spoil it.
there is allready one for weather, moduling the cosmos is indead one of the things blue gene is going to do, or to be more pricise it is going to do calculation about how planets, stars move and hope to discover more about the why.
Don't worry, nobody really likes teh matrix!!!oneoneone anyway.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations.
I commented on a similar previous corporate welfare handout where IBM was producing some software to mimic the human brain or some crap like that...to the tune of around half a billion dollars.
This is yet another such example...Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is "operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy" This is yet another example of the public subsidizing hech tech industries, specifically IBM but it happens for others as well.
When are enough people going to stand up and put a stop to this bullshit so that we can use our money for much better use? Or better yet, when is the public going to be involved in deciding for themselves which projects get priority and how they are to be run?
And our government has the nerve to lecture others on how to run a democracy!
It's not about wiping all life out... It's about saving a) money b) the environment c) political face, all while maintaining a diverse arsenal to deter attack, or to retaliate upon attack.
So happens, this does help develop and promote technology that will eventually filter down to consumer products. Win-win-win.
Particularly germane to the subject of nuclear weapons, Nobel felt that the deterrent nature of explosives was its most valuable asset.
"...on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops," he once wrote.
One could certainly argue that Nobel's belief was naive, especially considering the advancement in destructive power of weaponry we've seen throughout the 20th century. But it's certainly significant that his stated views did not stop him from continuing to work on problems of munitions and explosives. "Good wishes alone," he once said, "will not ensure peace."
Whether every single open source developer who has contributed to the Linux kernel feels the same way as Nobel is beside the point. Nobel clearly believed that the ills that can come of science do not outweigh the good merely by virtue of their existence. As evidence of the wisdom of this belief, I doubt many people will point to dynamite as one of the world's lasting evils today, and yet in Nobel's time some people would probably have characterized it as such.
And, one could further infer that Nobel recognized that man's propensity for war has far predated any kind of scientific or technical advancement and that, therefore, the latter cannot be blamed for the former.
Breakfast served all day!
Word on the street has it that this baby will support 65,536 unique colors all on the same screen.
A computer that can run Doom 3!
There was allot of reaction to the French testing nuclear weapons in the south Pacific 5 years ago.. And the general consensus was that the nuclear tests has no effect any of closest populations. Then the argument was that nuclear tests only further the current proliferation of weapons.. My question is: how are computer tests any worse??
Man you are a hypocrite. You denounce the use of decimal in favor of hex, but yet you prefer to give numbers in decimal:
2^16 = 2^10h
Follow your own damn rules before telling the rest of the world what they should do.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Ok, assume I have a 128 bit key. How long to crack with a supercomputer this size? Anybody have a reference to mips->cracking time for something like this?
Just a thought...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
lets say you have two apples, one in each hand, then lets say you label the one in your left hand "0" then lets say you label the on in your right hand "1".
Now I'm going to ask you HOW MANY apples do you have?
a.) 1
b.) 2
It will be the exact same thing here. Do you really think IBM isnt paid huge amounts of money for this work? They are doing research here; they are making priceless experiences - and they are paid for it. The public is paying the research; the company will make the profit. It is always working like this.
Why do you think that any sane being would invest money for more and more powerful nuclear weapons? Because we need them? Bullshit. It happens because money is spent and some make profit for doing research. That is the reason. The only reason.
... had Edward Teller had his way. The Chariot Project would have terraformed part of the northern Alaska coast into a deep-sea base for submarines, using nuclear detonation as excavation tool.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations.
Surely, the whole world knows what happens when nuclear weapons are used. Can't they think of something better to use this processing power for?
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
True, free knowledge can be used for evil or for good. For instance, a developer could place his open source work under a licence that specifically forbids specific uses (and this is something I did when I was younger, more idealistic, and less realistic). My early OSS works were not GPLd, but used a BSD-style license with certain conditions.
The problem with this is that you cannot simultaneously restrict and promote knowledge. As another poster has commented, everything we do as a society is interlinked: your taxes pay for guns and bullets as much as they do for medicine and books.
If a technology is truly free, it has no prejudices about who uses it. The GPL adds a second layer of freedom: it protects technology from being stolen and locked up again.
The OS developer who contributes to software used in the development of nuclear weapons will find one day that the nuclear weapons establishment has also contributed to the same software.
What I'm trying to say (and I worked all night on a stupid report, so my IQ is around 36 now), is that OSS is about the freedom of knowledge, and this flows in all directions: as much from the developer to the user as vice versa.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
if M$FT buys Google, i guess i will have to change my home page...
damn those M$ devils pollute/destroy every thing they touch...
"Blue Gene/L, the first member of the family, will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory."
But does it support SATA RAID5?
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
I just love it when someone writes an article, and doesn't know hot to put it into words people can understand.. So they come up with this jackass "it's a million billion!" shit.
16 trillion bytes of data = Approx 15 terabytes.
What the hell is so hard about saying "15TB" ?
Bowie J. Poag
If they're going to put so much money and so much effort into this, why do they have to research nuclear weapons? Surely we have enough weapons for everyone now. For fuck's sake. There's enough to wipe out all life on the planet hundreds of thousands of times over.
Why not research into harnessing different kinds of energy. Or search for a cure for cancer. Or look for fucking aliens.
But please. Not more fucking weapons. There are enough.
I was getting quite excited reading that article and then came the bit about the weapons testing that it will be used for. Why the fascination with self-destruction all the time? Can anyone think of some possible better uses?
Wake up, please...
Geez... I was beginning to think that the geeks were slipping. I really had to search, to find the "imagine a Beowulf cluster" comment. Almost had to post it myself! Thanks for taking care of business.
A computer that can *create* Doom...
Admitedly, Plowshare didn't get anywhere, but I'd suggest you investigate some Russian applications of nuclear landscaping. The USSR actually did use some nuclear weapons to create lakes.
As someone has already pointed out, the article is dated 24th October 2002. And indeed, we already had that story on /. on 25th October 2002 (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/25/05232 57) ;)
Does this qualify as the dupe story with the longest time gap inbetween?
That sounds like a lot, but it's only 246 megabytes per processor.
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I'm proud of IBM. Back when I was computing on my TI 99/4A, I used to root for Compaq and the other "clones" because IBM was the man. Looks like they are the most forward thinking corporation on the planet. Either that or their just as greedy as they've ever been and free software slaves in open source spell PROFIT! That was sarcasm. Or was it?
Two thoughts:
- What are the morals of using open source software to calculate stuff that might one day kill the original coder?
- Considering the open source nature of the setup, wouldn't that justify sharing the results with world?
Anyway, it is certainly a shame to see that we still feel that we need to spend money, knowledge, etc. on finding better ways to kill eachother...
There I was, trying to rescue the world, but did it show any gratitude?
OT but thanks for that.
Moderators: Don't agree? pray tell why.
The A-bomb was such experimental technology that it was very uncertain that either model would even detonate, thus one of the reasons to do the missions in secret rather than announcing a demo out in the harbor. The second bomb was used to show that the U.S. had the resources/luck/skill to pull off a second detonation. It was of a completely different design and if the first one failed to work, maybe this one would.
Again, at the time, there was no knowledge of what would actually happen, especially in regards to after effects due to radiation exposure. Additionally, mass destruction of urban areas was standard practice at the time. See examples from various fire bombings in Europe.
In hind sight, we now know how nasty radiation poisoning is, but that was not known then. A lot was not known then, carcinogens and mutagens/hormone mimics like asbestos and DDT were considered OK. Even wrist watches and alarm clocks had radium lighted dials.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Server 54, Where Are You?
0 12
April 9, 2001 (4:28 p.m. EST)
TechWeb News
The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time. Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell Inc. (stock: NOVL), IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.
Talk about reliability! WE have several Netware servers that have been up for years - Literally. Now that Novell is embracing the Linux world I hope we see the same dedication to quality that they have had in thier other products. If they only would tell the world what they are capable of doing....
*Posted using 100% recycled electons* The Tweaker
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0
16,000,000,000K should be enough for anybody. But don't quote me on that!
... someone realizes that he is breathing an atmosphere shared with actual nuclear weapons, infused with toxic dust from airliners crashing into buildings. There is water vapor which ran thru baby diapers. And others walk over the very land where massive numbers of people died in countless wars, he is following in their very footsteps!
Oh, the horror, the horror!
Infuriate left and right
65,000 processors at $650 per CPU to license the SCO portion of Linux comes out to $42,250,000.
I'll take two!
What's Beowulf anyways?
</troll>
This project is a way of grabbing market share in the supercomputer market, not any other market.
Oh, but wait a minute. That's right... IBM has over 30% of the server market. More than HP, Dell, and Sun. But they're 0.6% behind HP in supercomputers! They'd better getting working on that poor market share.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Venus in Blue Genes!
Note - appaling pun aimed at those of the older persuasion.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
... this system with T1 or better bandwidth and a 3' by 5' HD monitor for a new generation of massive multi-user role playing games.
One can dream, at least. :)
Noone wants Blue Screens on their Blue Genes!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I recently started working at IBM doing iSeries Linux work, when I mentioned to someone that I had taken an MPI class in college. I found out later that he was doing BGL work and needed help, so now I work on this! IBM Research BGL Home
There are 65536 (2^16) compute nodes (CNs) on the system running a very small, from-scratch OS. There are also 1024 (2^10) I/O nodes on the system running a full Linux system (ZDnet article). The custom CN kernel is designed to look like linux, but is much smaller and written for a very singular purpose.
The system has a number of networks that link all the nodes together. The first is the 3-D Torus network, the point-to-point node connection topology. The asteroids game is a 2-D torus because the top connects to the bottom and the sides connect; a 2-D torus looks like a donut when connected together. A 3-D torus looks like a cube (3-D Mesh), but the sides are directly connected to the opposite end (it really requires 4 Euclidean dimension to draw well). This network only connects the 2^16 CNs.
The I/O nodes (running Linux) are connected by ethernet and then each linked to 64 CNs by the tree network. Unsurprisingly, it looks like a tree (for the people who actually know what a plant called a tree looks like, it is not like that).
Summary PDF
-- Roger, there's a bug with #21890, go check, STOP
-- Ok Houston. STOP
-- Houston, I lost my map. I can't find my way back. STOP
-- euh.. Roger, don't panic, we'll do somthing...
-- Houston, this computer is alive!
-- Yes Roger, he got self repare functions and evolution capabilities.
-- I s... I see something moving towards me!!
-- Can you repeat Roger?
-- mayday!.. heeeelp aarrGrgghh!!
-- Oh gosh, we lost one more.
I'm just a no good, dirt bag, low life, tax payer making an observation.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations.
Gee mister government scientist. Nobody in the whole world knows the exact radius of a nuclear explosion; plus or minus 1 centimeter. 'God Speed' the L.L.N.L. folks.
If the the folks at the empoverished L.L.N.L. ever get bored doing the same experients over and over again, maybe they can work on some projects that promise front page news, AND further funding, like:
* Cure for Cancer.
* Cure for AIDS, and HIV
* Space Elevetor.
* Anti Gravity.
* Microsoft Security Holes.
* Space Plane.
* 'Transporting', al la Star Trek...
* Nueral Mapping
* Slowing down re-entry of the Space Shuttle in the first 60 minutes of desent.
* Create a PDA that allows Software Engineers to develope code; anywhere.
* Find Bin "PoopPee-Pants" Laden, and Sadam "No-Bath" Hussen.
It may be that Linux is currently being used to develop nuclear weapons, but this article has nothing to do with that. As the name implies, Blue Gene will be used for genetics research. Specifically, the protien folding problem, which in turn could help Geneticists to develop new wonder drugs without the current random trial and error methods they use. Imagine if we could simply plug in the code for HIV, run it through the computer, and custom design a drug to fight it. I'd think the developers of Linux would feel pretty good about that.
Blue Gene -look out world you know I've got mine
But Remember they always let you down when you need 'em...
Except for a few hobbyists (Linux or Windows), no one cares about the OS. All they care about is their application. You buy whatever platform that runs the tool you really need. MS-DOS got its start mostly because it happened to be the OS that VisiCalc ran on top of for PCs. People wanted VisiCalc, so they bought DOS.
This is particularly true for supercomputers, where the OS basically does squat. It's reduced to a filesystem to copy some files into memory. The actual application is all hand-coded for maximum speed using the quirks of a particular set of hardware. Since the role of the OS is insignificant, people just grab whatever they can slap onto the hardware to make it go. Historically, that's typically been some flavor of Unix, because Unix was zero cost ("libre" not the issue), source was available, and it was bland and generic enough not to get in the way of the fancy hardware. One-off OSes to go with the hardware were common, but the supercomputer companys barely make money as it is, and any corner they can cut is important -- especially if it's just support software rather than the hardware or app which is the main focus.
Some one-off bazilliflop mondoputer using Linux is not a "major endorsement of the OS", and says absolutely nothing about its usefulness as a desktop or server, or its stability.
Actually, Blue Gene is being built to simulate protein folding if I remember correctly. Sure, it could be used for other purposes, but so could any computer. The project you may be thinking of is called ASCI White . Here's the ASCI project (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative).
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
Yes, due to globalization every time you produce anything you are assisting arms development, but you must admit that there are degrees of assistence. I think it's perfectly reasonable to fork any open source license to include restrictions on use; some examples:
You'd probably want something modular like the Creative Commons License so every group of developers could decide for themselves just what uses of their software they were acceptable with. Yes, this might not be "free", but I think that for the majority of users such software will be philosophically compatible with free software. Remember: GPL is not the point, freedom is the point.
IBM expects the Unix offshoot to be more popular than its own version of Unix, called AIX
The truth is that AIX isn't entirely IBM's property, and Linux is not Unix. I guess SCO has an operative inside of zdnet.
Funny how Apple makes supercomputers with IBM's chips while IBM makes supercomputers with AMD's chips. Sun is starting to us x86 and Sparc64 chips despite its own UltraSparc line. HP dropped the Saturn chip for ARM. Can anyone afford their own chips these days?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Isn't it pathetic to waste such a computer to perform nuclear weapons simulation.
This should have been obvious, but after reading this story I realize that IBM is supporting Linux to drive Sun under, and they're succeeding. Sun is the only one of the top four Unix vendors to see a decrease in server unit sales this quarter, when overall unit sales were up 21 percent. IBM's increased 37 percent, while Sun's fell 6 percent.
IBM will be demoing many of their Linux solutions at SCALE 2003. Want a discount? Use the code "invtd' to get into the talks. Want a free expo pass use the code "free" to get into the exhibit hall. Both codes can bet used on the SCALE order page.
2^8 is still better 256. Another example is pricing at binary intervals, $16, $32. It's not all or nothing.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Somebody give the above another mod point, It's how we're actually building the machine. Only the I/O nodes run linux and they are very stripped down, just the kerenl, a few device drivers (some custom) and a handfull of applications for manging the I/O processing. The compute nodes run a high performace unix kernel out of IBM research that is almost devoid of any usefull function other then number crunching, MPI, and hooks to the I/O nodes.
Smaller varients of the machine being built for LLNL will (hopefully) be sold to private companies who need huge compute power for tasks like protein folding (think drug companies, remember that the name is BlueGene after all) or geophysical modeling (think oil companies).
Where's mod privs when ya want 'em...sigh
-l
65,000 processors ought to be enough for anyone.
2^8 is still a valid hex number. What are you saying in this post? You'd prefer the price of goods to rise exponentially by powers of 2. Yeah, that be great if I could expect the price of everything I buy to double every quarter/year, whatever. You are an idiot.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Something simple like pricing something $2.56 will show you to be an advanced thinker. A better example is 2^16, which is decimal, but better than the decimal expansion.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist