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A Look Inside Virginia Tech's New Super Computer

Posted by Cliff on from the taking-a-peek dept.

Mr Bob "The original" bougert brings us "...a video of the Virginia Tech super computer centre. How many people think that super computer centres like this, with their reasonably cheap cost should be created in more places? This video of the infamous super computer should be interesting to some and pretty to look for others." It views like an ad for Apple, but Virginia Tech has scored quite an achievement with this milestone, and this should serve as a decent introduction for those unfamiliar with the project.

32 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. it's a dupe by schematix · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a repost of "Xgrid Clustering Software and Demo" in the Apple section..it's just one of the links listed in the story.

    --
    Scott
  2. It views like an ad for Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    so we are going to post it anyway ?

    Apple isnt a charity, shall we see what Microsoft are up to ?

    1. Re: It views like an ad for Apple by hoggoth · · Score: 5, Funny

      > I'd rather watch this video than endure another Linux bore-a-thon.

      My favorite linux-switch-ad.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  3. Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    iGrow tired of all these apple stories.

    1. Re:Hmmm by ActionPlant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I absolutely agree. And funny that it should happen after they've finally fully embraced open souce (OSX). Let THAT be a lesson to the MS-Rest of the world.

      Damon,

      --
      http://actionPlant.com
  4. Ad? Really? by rabel · · Score: 5, Funny

    It views like an ad for Apple,

    Gee, did the fact that it was hosted at apple.com clue you in?

  5. build your own by Guano_Jim · · Score: 5, Informative


    build your own with xGrid!

    --
    3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
  6. Imagine... by Zelet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...what they could do now for the same cost using the new Xserve dual 2 Ghz G5.

    Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
    512K L2 cache/processor
    1GHz system bus/processor
    512B DDR400 ECC SDRAM
    80GB Serial ATA drive
    Dual Gigabit Ethernet

    All for only $3000. They could really built a small, inexpensive cluster with a couple thousand of those.

    --
    ...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
    1. Re:Imagine... by bedmison · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The rumor here on campus is that Apple is going to let them trade the G5 towers for G5 XServes, 1:1. So if you are wondering where the first 1100 XServes are going, look no further than Blacksburg.

      There is some question as to whether they are going install more nodes than the 1100 they have. Given that there are 96 52-U racks currently housing the 1100 towers, they will have plenty of space for more XServes. We did get an email saying the info systems building will be without power over the coming weekend as new power lines are installed...Coincidence? I think not.

  7. Looks like an ad? No, it looks like an ... by burgburgburg · · Score: 5, Insightful
    extremely convincing ad.

    Virginia Tech put together a spectacular number 3 ranked supercomputer for a (comparative) pittance in a (comparative) heartbeat. They did it with Apple's latest/greatest. Is it surprising that Apple wants this story told? I'm just shocked that they aren't filling the airwaves with the story (at the very least on every news program that PHBs watch).

  8. Re:Misconceptions RE: ECC Ram by gwernol · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is just a reposting of an earlier Slashdot article, and should be modded down.

    Congratulations - you've found an occupation even lower than troll: plagarist.

    --
    Sailing over the event horizon
  9. Interesting by WndrBr3d · · Score: 4, Funny

    it's nice to know that after a hap-hazard movie career, Fisher Stevens can go on to do an Apple Commercial about the Virgina Tech Super Computer. He can put on a clever discuise, but the minute he said 'Oh no Jonny Five', I knew it was him.

  10. The most telling statistic for me by dgrgich · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was amazed at the cost/performance ratio that they were able to achieve with Big Mac. Over at Barefeats.com, they point out that a Dual 2ghz G5 is roughly 17% faster AND more expensive than a Dual 1.8 G5 - keeping the cost/performance ratio fairly equal. Taking this out to supercomputer levels, the #1 supercomputer is three and a half times faster than Big Mac but cost 60x as much money!!! Amazing.

  11. Pricing by TechnoWeeniePas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The video states that the top two cost in the hundreds of millions to build...but never says how long ago. Dont get me wrong the Mac cluster is quite impressive and inexpensive but the price to power ratio has been changing quite rapidly just in the last few months! So if you rebuilt the top two today how would they rank pricewise?

    1. Re:Pricing by HeghmoH · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Earth Simulator is less than two years old, counting from when it was turned on.

      Assuming an optimistic 12 months of doubling for Moore's Law, that's a factor of four. So you've cut the cost by at most a factor of four if you built it today. The VA Tech supercomputer still utterly destroys it on price/performance.

      --
      Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
    2. Re:Pricing by lquam · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The Earth Simulator (#1) and Asci Q (#2) were both completed in 2002, although I know planning on the Earth Simulator goes back to the mid-90s. No idea on when Asci Q was planned, but it's 8192 1.25GHz Alphas (SC45 servers) which is current technology for the Alpha line. But with TES you're talking about something that's nearly two orders of magnitude more expensive than VT's X. If you could build it today for the same price or perhaps 75-80% and get another 10-20% performance out of it it would still be way more expensive on a $ per GFlop basis.

      More interestingly, #4 on the list in the NCSA's Tungsten with 2500 3Ghz P4s. It's about 15% slower with 300 more desktop procs than X and was also made operational in '03. I suppose if they were to run around plugging 3.2 GHz processors into their 1250 Dell boxes one could perhaps sneek up on X, but you'd likely have to wait for the 4 GHz P4e to actually steam past it.

      Basically, the supercomputers which were completed most recently ARE the ones at the top of the list. X just happens to be insanely cheap compared to the ones above it.

      Len Quam

  12. Just a quick tip by Ophidian+P.+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    The project leader, Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, will be speaking at a session entitled Building Virginia Tech's G5 Supercluster on Jan 28 at the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X conference.

    He'll probably reveal some of the technical details, such as the version of Mac OS X used, at that session.

    Also, according to a blog at O'Reilly:

    Next year, all the little known details [about the cluster] will be revealed in a new book. By that time we'll know what the project means for supercomputing and for Apple.

  13. PCs to Crays by fdicostanzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does anyone know the relative speeds of todays PCs vs. an old super computer from the 80s?

    UMass had one of those Connection Machines with the 65k processes and the blinking lights sitting unused in the basement for awhile and I was always curious to know whether it was any faster than what could be done serially with a 3GHz PC.

    --
    Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
    1. Re:PCs to Crays by davechen · · Score: 3, Informative

      According to this page a 64k processor CM-2 could do 2500 megaflops. Looking at the #4 machine on the Top 500 list, NCSA's P4 Xeon based system, a 3GHz Xeon gets about 3.9 gigaflops. But then it doesn't have cool blink lights of a CM-2. Pretty amazing how far things have progressed. The first supercomputer, the Cray 1, introduced in 1976, did 160 megaflops and had 8 megabytes of memory. Kinda like a Palm Pilot.

    2. Re:PCs to Crays by flaming-opus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The connection machines never were real speed deamons in their day. They were built to be used for AI codes (lots of one-bit integer ALU's), but AI groups don't have any money so they re-tooled it to do floating-point math, but they really only sold them with the help of DARPA subsidies.

      http://www.cray.com/company/history.html

      As for the old crays, you probably don't want any of those from the 80's. Even the New cray X1 processor's have a theoretical peak of 12.8 Ghz, a little less than twice the G5. But it's important to remember that this doesn't tell the whole story. The X1 has 34 GBps/CPU memory bandwidth and 77 GBps/CPU to cache. It also has a 400GBps of interconnect bandwidth for a single cabinet. It's always been cheaper per flop to buy small computers and gang them together. It's not ALWAYS the best solution.

      What the big mac performs really well on are hugely parallel computations with few dependancies between each piece of the computation. (like Linpak for example.) When there is a lot of dependancies between peices of the computation, large shared-memory machines work much more efficiently. Thus a bunch of DOD and DOE labs (plus meteorological sites and boeing) are still interested in paying the premium for custom vector supercomputers.

  14. Virginia Tech purchased those Macs at full price by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more.

    Virginia Tech did not get a discount on those machines. They purchased 1100 Dual 2ghz G5s at full price and spent around 3.5 million dollars on those machines. And other 1.5 to 2 million was spent on networking hardware, software, racks, etc.

    Furthermore. You don't have to buy individual licenses for OS X. OS X server comes with an unlimited client license and you can put it on as many computers as you please. Or, you can decide to use OS X (client), and every new Mac comes with that for free anyway. There are also no serial number or license activation annoyances involved with OS X.

    --
    "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
  15. Let me amplify: Why the hell ... by burgburgburg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    hasn't anyone else built one yet? The proof-of-concept is done, and let's face it, $5.2 million is tissue money for some companies. Don't they want their own 10 teraflop supercomputer?

    1. Re:Let me amplify: Why the hell ... by BWJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My guess is that a number of folks are planning on building them. Especially now that the 1U G5 Xserve is out. Here is the issue though: VTech wanted to publicize this as a means to attract attention to their programs and Apple wanted to publicize this for obvious reasons. However, if I were a company (or a private or government institution), I may not want to advertise the fact that I am building one of these superclusters. Think about it. This could be a serious stealth weapon (so to speak) for a number of industries that have historically spent huge amounts of money on supercomputing infrastructures.

      --
      Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
  16. Re:Need QuickTime for Linux ! by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 4, Informative

    :/
    Alright. It's time to crawl out of the hole.

    Download VLC or MPlayer. They both play Quicktime files and Sorenson 3 Quicktime files. Moreover, they play them better then the QuickTime player does. (they also play just about everything else in the world)

    Every Linux user should have one, or both, of these media player installed on their machines. Seriously.

    --
    "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
  17. In-Famous by khendron · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why does Cliff repeatedly use the word "infamous" (a synonym of "notorious") to describe nifty things, like a supercomputer. He did it earlier today with the article about the Internet Archive.

    Maybe he's using the Three Amigos definition of the word...

    --
    Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
  18. Re:Virginia Tech purchased those Macs at full pric by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OS X server comes with an unlimited client license and you can put it on as many computers as you please.

    Nope. Unlimited clients mean that unlimited clients can connect to the server. You still have to have separate OS licenses for your client machines. But this has nothing to do with clusters that run regular OS X.

  19. My favourite quote: by ath0mic · · Score: 4, Funny

    "At a price of 5.2 million dollars, practically anyone can build one. "

    I think I'll invest in one of these right after I pay off my iPod.

  20. More about the cluster by kcm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Paragraphs, man. They're useful.

    Anyway.. no OpenMosix here, this is using MPI. Specifically, on top of DK Panda's MPI libraries, they brought Kazushige Goto in to optimize the BLAS libraries in order to obtain the Top500 ranking of 10+ TF.

    Incidentally, the Top500 rankings are based on a standardized LINPACK benchmark and formula, not "raw" processor rankings. I saw another comment that implied the latter.

    Other interesting notes:

    • With conventional air cooling, the airspeed throughout the facility would have been 60-70MPH+. Try working on a console in a hurricane.
    • Dr. Varadarajan is a very very cool guy. He absolutely knows every detail that is going on in this machine, and knows how to make a good story out of it.
    • The facility this is in was upgraded to handle 3MW. The current cluster takes around 1.5MW. And you thought your Athlon was hot. :)
    • The #1 Top500 machine, the Earth Simulator, not only runs on custom Hitachi vector hardware, but required an entire new building to be built. The facility is a feat in itself, and is a big portion of the cost (for those of you extrapolating cost/performance if it was built at the same time as System X).
  21. Why trade 'em back to Apple by amichalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My first thought when I heard about the 1100 VT deal was that when g5 xServes are available, VT will replace the PowerMac cluster and distribute the 1100 over the campus.

    Any rumor of that?

    --
    I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
  22. Re:Apple Hardware? by JeffTL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apple builds outside, but they seem to do most of their R&D in America. Dell, in my experience, does just the opposite excepting their apparent comparatively low amount of R&D: they do their construction in Round Rock, but more or less stick together the innovations of others. The last thing Dell actually invented that I can recall is their business model. And new ways (e.g. flaps) for a computer to collect dust bunnies unbeknownst to the owner.

  23. Re:My Beef With Apple by ActionPlant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is really interesting! And I'm wondering how you got started. Have you done this for a while? Did you use Apple first, or PCs?

    I've been doing the same (building custom PCs) for other people for years, and yet when it comes to my own computers I opt for Macs. I'm a recent convert. Why?

    Because I got tired of struggling to make drivers work together, finding different games and programs were optimized for different chipsets, and dealing with Windows registries to try to make everything run as smoothly as possible.

    Then I tried a Mac. Pretty much everything worked out of the box, smoothly (like it was optimized for the platform, not a specific driver), and almost everything I extra tried in it was practically designed to already work WITH what I already had in the computer. The OS is far more elegant and makes sense to my less savvy customers.

    Price is often the bottom line. For the advantages, I prefer to run Macs personally. I can't fault people who opt for the dollar-accessability of PCs. I guess it's all in how you personally prioritize, and how much work you want to put into making the system work.

    Damon,

    --
    http://actionPlant.com
  24. Re:Virginia Tech purchased those Macs at full pric by Vaystrem · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more."
    Wrong. Anyone who has sold computers or has industry experience will probably let you in on a little secret: there is a tiny markup in computers. Period. Money is made in accessories and service plans.

    And for (hopefully the last time)Macintoshes are not more expensive! This point has been made many many times on Slashdot. But to make it one more time (IANAMU [I am not a Mac User]):

    $6,174.00
    Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
    4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
    2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
    ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
    56k V.92 internal modem
    SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
    Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
    Mac OS X - U.S. English

    $6,634
    Dell Precision Workstation 650
    2 xIntel(R) Xeon(TM) Processor,3.06GHz,512K Cache
    Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional
    Hyper-Threading feature preset to "ON."
    Memory: 4GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC
    Keyboard: Entry Level, PS/2, No Hot Keys
    Mouse: PS/2,Dell, 2 button w/no scroll
    Monitor: No Monitor Option
    Graphics Cards: nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor VGA capable
    Speakers: Internal Chassis Speaker
    Productivity Software: Dell Precision Workstation
    4X DVD+RW/+R AND 16XDVD-ROM,DVD Decode/Sonic SE(for Professional Authoring) DRWDV4X
    2x250GB SATA, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache(TM) SARC RAID
    Floppy Drive: 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive

    So what was that about macintoshes being more expensive?

    (Note I had to reformat the Dell Quote so that it would look ok)