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The Amazing Shrinking Supercomputer
mE123 writes "It would seem that IBM is trying to change what we all think of as super computers. Their new Blue Gene family of super computers is meant to be 6 times faster, consume 1/15 of the power and be 1/10 the size of current models. The prototype is already number 73 (with 2 teraflops) on the list of the most powerful super computers and it's only "roughly the size of a 30-inch television". They are hoping to be able to make it up to 360 Teraflops using only 64 racks." We covered this a bit earlier, but without the level of details.
Should the priority be making faster supercomputers (but large) or smaller supercomputers (but the same speed)? This one seems to be a step in both directions, but I wonder if they're sacrificing speed for size (or vice-versa).
So, how long will it be before these become commoditised for sme's ?
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:-)
Something that fits into the space of a 30" TV set (how about dimensions, guys ?) is presumably about half to 1/3 a standard rack in a co-lo. 2 Teraflops of processing power ought to be able to comfortably shift the bottleneck to the bandwidth, even for database-orientated sites
I think people's cost expectations are going to be significantly impacted by the size of this - if it's small, it must be cheap, right ? (wrong, but try telling them...)
Fantastic acheivement, btw, kudos to the man in blue
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I'm awaiting a supercomputer affordable by a small business...something top 100 $30-$60k...then i'll be impressed. Otherwise, it makes no difference to me as I will never get to play with one. *sigh*
If you read the press release, they claim that previous 2 teraflop machines fill up entire rooms, with more than a dozen racks. I'm not so sure this is the case: for instance, Apple claims 798 gigaflops to a rack with the Xserve; by my reckoning that works out to needing 2.5 racks to get 2 teraflops. And that's just with dual 1.3 GHz G4 CPUs; I'd imagine there is an upcoming Xserve rev featuring dual 2.0 GHz G5's.
Don't get me wrong, it's still an impressive achievement (especially if it uses as much less power as claimed.)
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
does this mean that someday my desktop will fit in a wristwatch???
just spectaclating
Kings in Europe are no longer Rich... at least not compared to US tycoons.
I work on the project.
We're packing 1024 compute nodes (each node having two CPU cores) into a rack. The nodes are small and based on the PowerPC 440, with beefed up floating point. It has to be air cooled - water is a PITA.
The finished machine will still be quite large - 64 racks with miles of cables. And that doesn't count disk drives. There isn't a single disk drive on the thing - the customer provides the filesystem, which will also be another beefy set of machines. It requires a new building.
The machine featured in the article is just half a rack. It is still respectable, coming in at #73 on top500.org. Might be quite useful for business and small scale scientific in it's current form. (This is far more than my alma matter had access too.)
only the five richest kings in Europe will be able to aford one.
A bit offtopic, but there are only four kings in Europe - those of Norway, Sweden, Belgium and Spain.
HH
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Many computer rooms use sprinklers. Halon is largely illegal now and many fire system contractors won't deal with it even if it is there.
We have a "dry" system, where you have to break 2 heads in separate zones for the system to flood, the room has to be almost 200F for water to actually flow.
Since the pipes are dry normally, it doesn't hurt at all if you accidentally wipe out a sprinkler head with a relay rack, or rip a pipe down in the ceiling. The rest of the building will be deeply engulfed in flame, and the computers will have already melted from ambient heat before the water system in that room kicks in.
In fact, my guess has always been that the reality, even with halon, is that halon/foam doesn't do you any good when the rest of the building falls down on top of your spiffy computer room.
The problem is, what happens if there's a LOCALIZED fire in that room. What if the PDU explodes into a million sparking pieces. What if the UPS explodes, bad things could happen. Of course, in either of those cases, the "bad things" would include probably sending a fairly deadly spike into the machines, frying them to the point that we don't care if the water is flowing or not.
I like music
They have no hope of bucking the Earth Simulator and taking the real crown, so they're pretending the rules have changed.
Two Points:
1. Who wants a " normal beige box"anymore.. It's just so 80's and
2.Considering that a Dual 2GHz Apple costs $3000 USD I don't think it will be tomorrow... or any time soon... try pricing out a Dual 64bit x86 box... that's prohibitive even for the average corporation, not to mention the (not so) average home user
Sure, the power we have today makes us all wonder how the hell we did things on a 33Mhz box... but supercomputers in a tower case... maybe in about 3 years...
It's the research that trickles down that can at some point provide solutions FOR EVERYONE(well not everyone at the same time). This is so obvious, it should'nt even have to be explained.
I mean, where do you think technology comes from. Come on, I have a Palm that has 75 times the clock speed of my first computer. This didn't come ex-nihilo. Huge expensive projects pushed the limits of computing and the resulting advances, combined with other developments in all branches of sciences and smaller projects in computing, made it possible.
And how do you think Parallel/Distributed computing came about? What do you even think a supercomputer is?
Remember the ENIAC, now look at a calculator. How's that for a solution for EVERYONE!
And the computers aren't obsolete when they come out!! They're no longer the fastest, but they aren't close to obsolete by any sense of the word.
That dosen't mean, however that technology is then available justly to anyone, but that dosen't have anything to do with it.
Don't mean to be rude, but this is really basic applied science.
Strioa
So you won't se supercomputer under your desk simply because as long as there is space it's possible to build a larger computer that do things that your computer can't do.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.