96 Processors Under Your Desktop

Roland Piquepaille writes "A small Santa Clara-based company, Orion Multisystems, today unveils a new concept in computing, 'cluster workstations.' In October, you'll be able to choose between a 12-processor unit for less than $10,000 or a 96-processor system for less than $100,000. These new systems are powered by Efficeon processor from Transmeta and are running Fedora Linux version 2.6.6. Apparently, this new company has friends in the industry. You already can read articles in CNET News.com ("A renaissance for the workstation?"), the New York Times ("A PC That Packs Real Power, and All Just for Me," free registration, permanent link) and the Wall Street Journal ("Orion Sees Gold in Moribund Workstations," paid registration). The company is targeting engineers, life scientists and movie animators. It's too early to know if the company can be successful, but I would certainly have to get one of these systems under my desk. In this overview, I've picked the essential details from the three stories mentioned above."

Comments

Re:strange

[isaac]

why not get a huge server where more users can benefit from the processing powers?

You could use these systems as such servers. The idea, though, is that these might be cheap enough to allocate to individuals.

and what kind of videocard does this baby pack?

No video card. These are just render/compute clusters in a box.

I'm impressed at the claimed 220W peak power consumption of the 12-node box, but wonder what kind of real computing performance it provides.

-Isaac

Re:Sounds nice, but

[Vo0k]

More frequent yes. But there are more parts within one board, so each of them separately needs less bandwidth than all of them taken together. So, 1G carefully engineered/switched (so each part has 1G bandwidth, not 1G shared between all) is quite sufficient. But then, say, 100 parts need 1G bandwidth between each other and 100M bandwidth to the other board, each. Makes 10G of throughput between boards easily.

Re:Cooling?

[evil_one666]

the transmeta chips used are specially developed to run at a low temperature. It is in fact this development alone which has enabled these "mini clusters" to now be manufactured

Piquepaille Slashdot spam must stop !

[wsapplegate]

Warning ! Warning ! Warning ! Warning ! Warning !

Attention, a public service announcement follows : do not read the "overview" touted by Mr. Piquepaille. This person constantly spams Slashdot, trying to get traffic to his site on Radio Userland (which I'm not linking to, for obvious reasons). Do NOT go to his overview, you're only giving traffic to a spammer. See these recurring complaints, for instance. Not to mention he steals the images he puts on his blog and sometimes also spews bullshit for lack of knowing better. This must stop. In any way, do not fall for the spam, and do not provide him any more traffic. Please also warn fellow readers when you see one of his self-serving posts.

And now, a personal message (warning : verbal abuse in foreign language follows) : Roland, tu nous les brises. Va te pendre, hé Ducon !

[disclaimer : I'm not commenting on whether the subject is interesting, or not. But the kind of astroturfing the submitter engages in regularly is just wrong]

Warning ! Warning ! Warning ! Warning ! Warning !