NASA Installs Linux Supercomputer

unassimilatible writes: "Federal Computer Week reports that NASA plans to study the ocean's future with the help of the world's first supercomputer of its kind to run on the Linux operating system. The new supercomputer -- an SGI AltixT 3000 single-system image supercomputer -- has been installed at the space agency's Ames Research Center in California."

Comments

Altix

[Preach the Good Word]

SGI's Altix handles up to 64 processors on a Linux kernel using the patches they release as opensource. As SGI hacks away at their bigmem and numa patches, they'll be able to handle more and more processors. The plan is to eventually graft enough IRIX technology to support just as many processors on Altix as they do with MIPS processors in Origin with IRIX.

Even if you aren't a fan of Itanium2, Linux, or NUMA, these patches are bringing some nifty high-end tech to the free software arena.

Re:Altix

[GooberToo]

Tons and tons of work has gone into 2.6 to make it fully NUMA aware and scalable. Last I heard, there were still some minor memory allocation node biases left in the scheduler, however, those are actively being worked on. Furthermore, they were considered corner cases and not general NUMA processing problem domains.

IIRC, one or more the developers has a 128 (or larger, I forget) CPU NUMA system that 2.6 periodically gets tested against. Many smaller NUMA systems are commonly used by several others. It seems that many, but not all of the NUMA optimizations, also help SMP systems as well. As such, the developers have not been shy about embracing it. When the O(1) scheduler was writen, it was a very short period of time before they started adding HT and NUMA optimizations to it.

Re:Altix

[EyeSavant]

The technology is fantastic. It will be even more fantastic when it works :-(. At the moment you have to be nuts to buy one of these, as they are complete bleeding edge technology. In Amsterdam they "upgraded" from a 1000 processor mips machine to a 416 processor Altix/Itanium2 machine. On paper an itanium processors should be 5 times faster than the old mpis processors. At the moment we are lucky to see 2 or 3 speedup. And that is AFTER you have tuned the damn things for itaniums.

It seems to be quite normal for code to run slower on the new machine than the old... So you have a tough porting job to do...

The problem with the itaniums is that all the hard optimisation stuff has been moved from the hardware to the compiler. Plus the compiler is buggy as hell at the moment... I am currently trying to track down why my code fails on the new machine when I turn the optimization on.. My money is on a compiler bug to go with the many other compiler bugs we have seen before.

I am sure they will be a nice machine eventually, but if you buy one now you are nuts.

Re:Altix

[bdrago]

This is incorrect.

The Altix at NASA is a true 512 processor single system image - it is not a cluster of smaller nodes.

Disclaimer: I work for SGI.

Re:Ocean? NASA?

[javiercero]

Fluid dynamics and environmental studies are also part of NASA's research mission.

Re:Patches ?

[BJH]

Don't know if this is what SGI is using, but the status of NUMA in the kernel and associated patches for it is shown here.

Re:Ocean? NASA?

[IvyMike]

To quote one of the articles:

"Using the vantage point of space, NASA gains an understanding of our home planet that we could never achieve were we bound to the Earth's surface," notes Dr. Ghassem R. Asrar, associate administrator of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. NASA's remarkable 45-year history and vast scientific and engineering resources have helped the agency launch numerous research missions to understand and protect planet Earth.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Almost but not quite...

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Re:Not quite "Supercomputing"

[Error27]

The thing that is special about the NASA computer is that it is a single image system and not really some cluster type thing. Mostly people say that Linux 2.4 scales well up to 8 processors, but this system has 256 processors.

SGI is working on scaling the kernel to even more processors. For example, Erik Jacobson from SGI recently noticed that 'cat /proc/interrupts' doesn't work if you have 512 CPUs in your system. Frankly when I saw that I thought it was a joke, but I guess it must be real if they already have paying customers.

How is this "News" for nerds?

[ODD97]

If I'm not mistaken, NASA *invented* the bewulf cluster. And it ran Linux then, too.
Clicky

Re:How is this "News" for nerds?

[Styx]

It isn't a beowulf cluster.

It uses a single system image for all processors, as opposed to a beowulf, which has separate system images for all cluster nodes.

Japanese govement ordered 4 x 64 CPU Altix 3700.

[zzztkf]

According to SGI Japan, Ministory of Education and Science
has orderd 4 Altix 3700 computer to make up 4 node
super computer, November 18th.

Each node, which altix3700 is equipped with 64 cpu. Total
main memory has reached 1.9TB.

It's also said that hardwares will be installed and in
operation in the early half of 2004.

Re:Ocean? NASA?

[BuilderBob]

The research is being done at the AMES labs in Moffett field, California. Home of the climate model for Mars and Solar system modelling and numerical modelling in general. As well as some X-projects (as in X15 and X33).

NASA doesn't just send things into space anymore.