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Teraflop In A Box At SC2003

Posted by timothy on from the worth-it-for-the-slideshow dept.

HPC Prophet writes "For those of you that can't go to SC2003 or can't afford the US$750 late registration, here is a small taste of what we put together for our friends at Mellanox Technologies...It benches out at over 1.2TFLOP (192 dual Intel Xeon Processor blades, 64 in a Rackable chassis, 128 crammed into a Ciara chassis and all connected via InfiniBand) and loaded up with Callident Rx (based on NPACI Rocks) OS/Middleware. Total estimated time to unpack, build and get up and running was 17 hours." Read on for some details on this power-hog.

"We had the single-most power density for the smallest size booth they offer (380amps @ 208v in a 5U of rack space (look closely at the bottom of the middle rack containing all the cables and InfiniBand switches). Cooling was very nice too, we maxed out our Liebert HVAC when building it initially. Oh, by the way, this would end up somewhere in the neighborhood of #38 on the June 2003 Top500 list. There are a couple of other pictures on there too of some of the other attractions at SC2003 like the 128-node cluster that NPACI folks will build in a 2 hour period. Sorry about the cheezy slide show, I had to be quick."

5 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Yet Another Unremarkable Cluster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A box full of Pentium Xeons in a cluster. So what? This stuff is getting rather passe. Where is the invention and innovation?

    1. Re:Yet Another Unremarkable Cluster by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Where is the invention and innovation?

      Perhaps you missed the bit about building the world's 38th most powerful computer (based on June '03 figures) in 17 hours? Damn impressive by any counts.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  2. Re:teraflop by triptolemeus · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Everything that needs Java.

    --
    The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
  3. Re:teraflop by jerald_hams · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ummm...I'll bite... Any modeling or visualization...anything application in which you need to calculate the complex interplay of many little components.
    I'm writing an application that simulates the evolution of language in a population of ~1000 neural networks. Try running that on your 386SX with math coprocessor.
    I only wish the price of these things would slide down a little more. Something like a PS2 cluster would be excellent for me if the linux kit wasn't so costly.

  4. Re:teraflop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't have a spare million, either, but that kind of 98% price reduction is still fairly impressive.

    Over 7 years, in terms of pure FLOPS, you'd expect the price to be halved about 5 times. So the price should be 1/32, about a 97% reduction.

    Is Moore's Law impressive? Sure. Is this particular case impressive against the background of general computing progress? No.