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Teraflop In A Box At SC2003
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."
If i'd had known that was considered a "sweet machine" i wouldn't have ditched the one i found in my basement! Damnit.
I like that they actually put this demo together with Windows XP Power Toys.
Intel Xeons? What a joke - overpriced, underperforming.
"For those of you that can't go to SC2003 or can't afford the US$750 late registration"
What about those of us that don't have a clue what sc2003 is?
In case anybody wants it, the link to the conference is at
http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/
Several of the lectures are being broadcast via high bandwidth video if
you are on Internet2.
A box full of Pentium Xeons in a cluster. So what? This stuff is getting rather passe. Where is the invention and innovation?
look like its a "Teraflop" in a box...Sure, aside from the two huge racks that contain all the nodes.
Still that is really cool! What about a beowo...Oh nevermind.
Sig it.
SHOVE IT, BIATCH!
I though itanic was supposed to be wonderful according to intel and HP. So why are they not promoting huge clusters of itanics? Why are they talking terraflops with cheap and nasty Xeons? 32-bit Xeons?! Everyone else is 64-bit nowadays.
Rotten kids, cant trust 'em these days.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
http://www.testdrivehpc.com/sc03/SC2003_booth_1011 _TFLOP_Cluster/html/35.htm
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
Would anyone mind actually pointing out applications that would need such speed?
Video Game cheats, hints a
not 'free' either? according to that notorious gossip, 'condition of anonymity'.
pateNTdead eyecon0meter: lookout bullow. the daze of the felonious georgewellian fuddite southern baptist freemason corepirate nazi payper liesense stock markup softwar gagster execrable (& their phonIE ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead hostage/.puppets), is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the increasing speed of right.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator.... get ready to see the light.
a computer that will be able to run Windows Longhorn!
Can it run XP?
Hmmm.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Now imagine making a Beowulf cluster...
Question should be: is XP able to run on it.
talk about a slide show? these foulcurrs felonious processes are kept secret, even from each other?
you won't be needing any phonIE payper liesense gadgets to be able to determine which direction the winds of change are bullowing, gale force/farce.
you call this weather? get ready to see the light.
tell 'em robbIE?
If you look at the more recent November 2003 list instead of the older June 2003 one, this cluster would rate more like #84 than #38.
/cj
Wow, this is weird for /. this post has been up for 30+ mins and it only has 35 replies.
they (va lairIE/robbIE) probully have 'immunity' doo to their whoreabull stock markup fraud sucksass so far?
cluster webcam
My girlfriend's rackable, but she doesnt clock anywhere near 1.2 taraflops. More like a few hertz, but hey...I can dream cant I?
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
I mean, really. They've obviously just taken the T off of Titanic, they know it's going to crash and sink but are trying to pull the wool over your eyes wi this bit of alphabetic subterfuge.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
...something tells me that they aren't running it on their 1 tflop box. ;o)
I am NaN
Sure would be nice to update more then one document, write and deploy some code and read email with out getting a blue screen of death.
But then I am SURE windows would bring this box to its knees
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Kinda reminds me of Mad Magazine. There was always an advert with someone trying to kill themselves because they didn't have a subscription and the newsagents had sold out.
How well do these blade boxes stand up to full trottle usage? Would a box like this handle running the distributed.net client for days and weeks and years? Although because this is an Intel box they will be slow as compared to AMD, but still a valid question.
Pretty Pictures!
http://www.sun.com/2003-1118/feature/
I thought the title read SCO2003.
Then I laughed out loud at the absurdity. SCO doesn't make products.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
why oh why, what happened to the news these days, seriously this just seems like one big advert and it is happening more and more at the moment.
I know that i will get trolled for this but i wanna read kewl stuff, not about #shock# a fast server (thats not even that fast really)
oh well mod me down i can afford it (as long as my karma repayments are ok )
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Meanwhile, IBM recently built the prototype for a single BlueGene/L node, and it manages to cram 1024 PPC440 processors, with a Rpeak of 2Teraflops, and an Rmax of over 1.4TF into about half the space of the full racks mentioned in this article.
While this article is obviously about a somewhat less custom system than BlueGene/L, I'd have to say I'm much more impressed with IBM's achievement.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
All these low powered clusters are fine and well, but what is the state of supercomputing for problems that really arent parallizable?
Nice job cabling it together. NOT!
I rather go for a SSI than a stupid cluster. One kernel one supercomputer, a cluster is just one distributed app running on a local network with low latency.
There is no rocket science in that, even my grandmother can crank two computers together on a network. No more work on the kernel to get it scale, so I do not need to program MPI and do the parallellization my self. I want the compiler and the OS to do it.
Now go support those companies doing some innovation in the field like Cray, NEC, Fujitsu, SGI and IBM.
I have to say after reading up on the "Rocks" cluster OS software they were using, aside from extravigant benchmarks, and bragging rights most of these multi-node cluster "supercomputers" are fluff when it comes to the average users's applications.
I buy a dual CPU or A Quad CPU machine for example because I know when I run a multithreaded app in XP or 2k or linux it'll spread out the load on all the cpus.
Just about all of these cluster programs are a complete pain in the ass, and either required specially programmed software, or some other terribly annoying method.
Is there any cluster software out there that'll behave (although obviously not performance wise) similar to having a multi cpu system? Where I don't have to jump through hoops.
Yet again Apple demonstrates that it and it alone defines the future of computing. How convienient that after demonstrating it's revolutionary clustered G5 system, the IBM's of the world immediately comes out with some hack designed to try to play catch up. Typical PC denial.
But back at SC96, I remember paying a nice cheap $75 to get in the door. Quite a bit of inflation, there.
As for what all that power is good for... Why do you need a use in advance of the power? Do you think there was some proto Les Paul sitting around in the 1700s with a solid body guitar and pick-ups, thinking "if someone would just discover electricity, this baby would wail"?
Make the power available and people will literally hurt themselves coming up with ways to exploit it.
- G
Start a happiness pandemic
"What about those of us that don't have a clue what sc2003 is?"
If you have a computer geek membership card, turn it in. If not, proceed directly to the next article. Do not pass go, and do not collect 200 miscellaneous promotional trinkets.
Although late registraton for exhibits is only $80, and it's $700 for the tech program.
paintball
Does it do any useful WORK?
paintball
Let's see... 380A * 208V = 79,040 VA, call it 79 KW (106 HP), or an energy density, assuming 5U of 19" rack (17" net) by 27" deep, of 19.68 Watts/cubic inch. BTUs dissipated per hour would be 269,843, requiring at least 22.47 U.S. tons of refrigeration required to cool it, or about what would be required to cool seven average Texas homes in summer (12,600 sq ft total). That's pretty impressive, if correct.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.