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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."
Any ideas?
Great... by october my brand-new machine will be hopelessly out-of-date. I knew it would happen, but had no idea they'd usurp me by 94 processors.
I thought '96 processors under your desktop! That would be the Pentium at 133MHz!
Seriously, why 96? Why not 64 or 128?
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Apparently, this new company has friends in the industry.
Apparently Slashdot is one of them
Can I run Doom 3 on it in maximum resolution mode?
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why not get a huge server where more users can benefit from the processing powers? and what kind of videocard does this baby pack? that must give some great doom3 performance :)
http://www.virtualconcepts.nl/
It'd be cool to have 12 high-end AMD processors instead of relatively slow Transmeta CPUs in this workstation. But I guess their total disspated heat will melt computer case :(
One thing perplexes me:
Chips on the same board communicate using Gigabit Ethernet, while board-to-board communication takes place on 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
Wouldn't same board communication be more frequent, hence needing the faster connection?
Better yet, why not 10GBe for both?
I really admire this guy; although the ventures he took part in haven't gone anywhere financially, they were pretty cool. Transmeta, OQO, and now this! Go Colin Hunter!
With the power requirements on this thing, the case will be half PSU. I can see the warning on the case now 'Do not place in carpeted areas.' I bet the electro-static discharge would make you sterile faster than the speed of rubbing socks.
ASCII pr0n. Coming to a Lunar Lander near you!
I'd like to see what the employees do with them after hours...
"Gotta work late today, honey. Oh, sorry, is this the Pizza place? Could you please hold one sec?"
"Gotta work late again today, honey..."
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
This time we don't have to imagine what a cluster would be like. It's already in the box!
The comment has already been made. Let's move it along people. Nothing to see here.
That'll be $9999, please.
Fedora currently is either Core 1 or Core 2. 2.6.6 is a kernel version number.
Kernel version != Distribution
Saying "Fedora 2.6.6" is like saying a car is a "Ford 2.4 liter".
96 processors running Fedora? I want one!
Actually, I would be willing to bet that the university I'm at could use a few of these things. After all, we've got undergrads doing BLAST database work, just to teach them about it. Having been through that hell myself, it'd be a lot easier if you didn't have to have a cluster to do the work by computer. For those who don't know, BLAST is a genetic sequencing database that allows for comparison with an extracted gene (retrived through polymerase chain reaction) with a known, sequenced gene in their database.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
The pricing seems quite steep. 800/cpu for 12 configuration, 1000+/cpu for the 96 cpu configuration. I can see why they have friends in the industry the prospect of selling 10 to 100 times the equipment per seat must have marketing departments salivating.
If your'e going to spend that kind of money though theres alllready solutions that will provide that level of processing cheaper.
There is also the utilization isssue, programming tasks hardly require 96 processors except on compile and link. You don't need 96 processors to wait for a keystroke. The same holds true in applications. You don't need cpu's waiting for a user to decide what to do.
If you're having lag problems, I feel bad for you son.
I got 96 processors and you got one!"
OK, apparently, someone took the "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these" a bit too seriously.
Way to go!
...in 3, 2, 1...
now thats a system i'd like to install gentoo on :)
-- Karma: beyond good and evil - mostly affected by posting political
I've got well over a hundred in the box under my desk. Unfortunately, it's just that. A box of over 100 CPUs, mostly Pentiums/Pentium IIs.
Now we just need to see a company come up with a complete LAN solution where every machine acts as a SETI@Home type client in a cluster, giving SMB's a supercomputer that works while it's various workstations comprising it are idling.
You should probably check out the product description anyway though; there are some quite interesting hardware design decisions in there!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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 !
Xenu brings order!
This wouldn't be as reliable as having 96/48/24/12 computers with 1/2/4/8 processors each, which would be important for things like movie animation.
And besides for movies, we already know to just fit as many Opterons in a rack as possible. What advantage does this have (except for cost)?
How many stories a week does this frigging guy get into Slashdot?
His business plan:
1) Sell Ad Space on "News" Website
2) Shovel In Content From Online Articles
3) Submit To Slashdot Daily
4) Tout "Slashdot Coverage" To Advertises
5) Profit!
And looking at his site, it works fine and dandy indeed.
Then again, is he just doing a service to us?
Am the only one who saw "A small Santa Claus-based company" I guess after seeing 96 processors under your desktop, that's what first came to mind.
100k for 96 processors? Figure you can get a barebones system with 256 MB ram for around $250. That's $24k for the boxes, a 96-port switch, and some good clustering software.
Where's the rest of the cost coming from?
I mean it's cool, but if I had $100k that absolutely needed to be spent, I'd get a Viper or something instead of a big server.
<ducks>
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Oracle RAC is one, but I can't think of any other popular title that would, expecially not for the desktop
Apache. It's on this computer I'm typing on now. Over 300 threads. I THINK it might get just a bit faster.
Good ol' WSJ, that hardcore tech rag. Next they'll tell me the brains march off little soldiers to various parts of Computer Land to give orders and bring back messages.
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First, I see that Transmeta are finally making 1.5GHz Efficeons, which is a good sign, they looked to be stuck at 1GHz for so long.
This merely looks like 12 computers on a single motherboard with a GigE switch connecting them together. Each computer is highly optimised of course, just a processor, memory, support chipset (GigE, IDE).
I do have to wonder how it compares with something similar made with Opterons or Pentium-Ms. Opteron has the advantage of being able to do SMP so the per-system processing power would be much higher, each board could have 4 low power 2GHz Opterons which will probably be close to the 12 Efficeons in terms of computing power and power consumption.
But still, this is a cool system. I wonder how fast it can do a kernel compile?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of.... ok, ok, I'll shut up.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
The whole point of this marketing exercise was to bring cluster computers out of the glass walled (and blinkinlight laden) server room, and to the desktop, on the assumption that the bureaucracy of node allocation gets in the way.
With this setup, a mathematician can get a flash of inspiration, fire up grid Mathematica, and have 12 processors testing her hypothesis in a matter of seconds. A biologist can run BLAST without having to worry about whether his colleagues might be hogging the computational resources.
Essentially, it's a very expensive "personal cluster" machine,
Can the editors PLEASE STOP POSTING PRESS RELEASE COPY?!?!
If you're going to post a story announcing a product or discovery, at least link to a weblog or site that actually has a little commentary on the subject, or the original site itself.
Roland "Fuckyfacey" Piquepaille is neither of these.
Thanks.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Or lack there of. I was imagining one of those SGI deskside Onyx servers when I read the post but these are just wide full towers that pack 96 processors. Quite nice. I am sure the movie industry is all over these babys. The 12 unit is around the size of a Sun pizza box.
How do the Transmeta CPU's do in fp computations? That is obviously the metric to note. I wonder how long it would take to render a movie? Is the USB USB 2? No firewire though.
Get quad opteron. It should get about better performance for same price as the other but without need for clustering, for the small system. For bigger system, you could use myrinet and dual opterons. Oh what the heck. It costs 600-800$ per processor to build a rack of Athlon64 based cluster with Gb ethernet. So this effineon based cluster would be beaten with system costing less than their solution. So it is beaten from two different solutions.
A) Getting single image opteron system if communicationlatencies are important.
B) Getting cluster of AMD64 if price/performance was important.
ONLY thing they bring is density of A for system type of B while costing more than A.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
> The search you linked to pulled up a pile of cool articles.
Please read the paragraph where I said I wasn't commenting on whether the article is interesting. The "coolness" of Piquepaille's spam isn't the subject.
> What "spam" are you talking about in this off-topic, flamebait troll of yours?
Please read the part where it says that the "overview", "more details" and so on in Piquepaille's submissions are always directed at his own weblog in an obvious attempt to get more traffic and hence more money from the ads that show on the aforementioned weblog. Posting disguised self-advertisements on Slashdot seems spammy enough to me, but you're of course entitled to your own opinion.
> What's self serving about any of those stories?
The fact that he always uses his submissions to drive traffic to his own site, where he uses plagiarized and/or stolen content to gain ads revenue. Note that all his submissions to Slashdot include a link to his own site. You won't find any where he would just point to the people who wrote the original content without peddling his blog. You also won't likely find anybody except himself posting links to his blog. Can you see a pattern here ? I sure can !
> Do you have anything interesting to say about this interesting looking workstation?
No, and I don't give a damn. See the aforementioned paragraph.
That's it. Posting deceptive self-advertisements to Slashdot should not be rewarded by ad traffic. But if you want to support him, you're of course free to do so. At least, you'll have been warned.
Xenu brings order!
In only a couple of months' time, you'll be able to put 8 Opteron cores (4 dual core CPUs) in a desktop-size case - and this is a rather reliable information. It is also very likely that similarly sized boxes with 8 CPU sockets (and thus possibly 16 cores) will appear next year: infoworld.com article.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040830_0920 16.html
It says:
"According to Hunter, the Efficeon architecture allows Orion to reach a performance of one flop per Watt - more than would be possible with any competing processor."
I'm familiar with megaflops and gigaflops and teraflops and petaflops, but what is so magical about "one floating point operation per watt"? Is this just a misquote, or does it mean something?
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
96 CPUs x $$$ == $$$$$$$ (you get the idea)
Being able to have one of these in a standard office that doesn't need a server room setup is the major factor, as I see it. It means that the company saves on racks, rackspace, the cost of electricity (which is going up as you may have noticed by the price of oil being over $40 per barrel), administrator costs (his salary alone will be worth it) and air conditioning for the server room.
Think of a small CG effects movie company (say around 5 to 10 employees): They want to be able to render their CG movie frames as quickly as possible in order to save money, but don't have the capital to buy and maintain an expensive server room setup along with the requisite admin type to look after it. These machines provide and effective alternative: 1 or 2 of the 12 CPU machines for the guys who do the rendering of small snippets and 1 96 CPU unit as an office renderer for resource expensive renderers.
Here's a 12-node cluster made of VIA EPIA V8000's with 800MHz C3 processors. Idle power consumption is ~140W.
"The machine runs FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. After working with his machine and running some basic tests, Glen's cluster looks to be equivalent to at least 4 (maybe 6) 2.4Ghz Pentium IV boxes in parallel on a similar network - achieving a performance of around 3.6 GFLP."
In the end, why put this thing under your desk? Just leave it in the server room and enjoy the quiet.
Since the chip thus can't be used in a shared-memory configuration, a cluster is ideal. (And frankly, a better use of resources than cramming SMP chips like modern x86 into single-processor boxes and clustering those like the latest Linux-cluster-of-the-month).
Honestly - the system is brilliant. With one catch: the paraniod side of me sees some purchasing department comparing one of these, and a similar Sun workstation, then buying this one because "it has more CPU power". Yes ... if you run an app that works over a cluster. If it's a shared memory app, the Sun/SGI/IBM/whoever workstation will leave this one in the dust.
I see one very immediate use for these machines: developing cluster applications! Apps that run on 500-way clusters really do need to be tested on smaller clusters before they consume expensive cluster time - this machine is PERFECT for such testing! Or at least, far better than anything else out there...
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire