Cray XT-3 Ships

anzha writes "Cray's XT-3 has shipped. Using AMD's Opteron processor, it scales to a total of 30,580 CPUs. The starting price is $2 million for a 200 processor system. One of its strongest advantages over the std linux cluster is that it has an excellent interconnect built by Cray. Sandia National Labs and Oak Ridge National Labs are among the very first customers. Read more here."

Comments

The math for a comparable Xserve system

[adzoox]

If the math is right for a 200 CPU system for $2 million ...

That would mean $10,000 per CPU

That would mean 100 Apple XServes

But for the comparison, let's just go with 200 Apple X Serves giving 400 CPUs total

Let's throw in 100 Apple XServe RAIDs fully loaded

1 Xserve G5 Dual 2.0Ghz = $3000

Multiply by 200 = $600,000

For cost savings we'll go with (20) 5.8 terrabyte RAID for $13,000 each

[Instead of 100 1 Terrabyte units for $6000 each]

=$260,000

Total = $860,000 for total system

Throw in approximately $120,000 for setup and integration (as comes with Cray purchases)

NOW double that - what a value for 6 teraflops calculation [extrapolated from Virginia Tech SuperComputer scores]

What a value!! Plus you have money left over to pay the tax!

Not really true, but true.

[tod_miller]

Yep, system design is harder, but if you have custom hardware and special programming, you can litterally run all these bitches at full steam.

If you need some inter process traps and doohickies, then you have to try and program code which is harder than licking you own tonsils going via your rectum.

Also, you have to realise that each one of these 200 processors have about 512kb of cache in total, and you can write a bloody good program using 100gb of CPU cache, especially if it is massively parrallella..lell...isable....

Now this reasearch may become prevalent as we try and run consumer based parellel processors, with multiple cores, as lithography sucks, and nanotech is going nowhere because of grey goo panic and Dexters Lab, and Smalle Pox.

Or so I heard.